How We Got Our Client a TV Show

How We Got Our Client a TV Show

We worked with author, Alice Morrison, last year to promote her first book, Dodging Elephants. In true Sunny Bird PR style we smashed it out of the park and generated so much national coverage that the BBC got in touch with Alice and commissioned a TV series all about her travels. The Story Behind the Story

Welcoming Journalist Steph to the Sunny Bird PR Team

March saw us welcome Steph to the team as one of our ‘sounding boards’ and most trusted media experts. She offers Sunny Bird PR a no nonsense approach when it comes to what press want from PR’s and brands in order to feature them. Steph cut her journalistic teeth writing for the Femail section of the Daily Mail where she specialised in human interest features, went undercover at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant and wrote investigative pieces on the trade in human hair for hair extensions and the rise in street begging. Steph's Bio

How to...Contact a Blogger

Bloggers and blogging have taken the world by storm – bloggers have the power to influence millions of consumers. In this digital age, consumers are more likely to trust the word of a blogger than other more traditional marketing tactics and businesses should be paying attention. How to...Contact a Blogger

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

Each week the Sunny Bird PR team research PR campaigns that have made their way into the media and choose one to share that demonstrates effectiveness, reach, simplicity, message and in some cases the opposite – how not to execute a PR campaign. Every month the team chooses their personal favourites and here we deliver them - The Good, The Bad and The Viral from the PR Campaign world. PR Campaigns

Blogger of the Month

Chichi was a features writer for House of Coco and has now moved into freelance work. Chichi also works around the clock as a fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogger, she has stepped away from wardrobe and make up long enough to answer the infamous Sunny Bird PR questions! Blogger of the Month

How to...Contact a Blogger

How to…Contact a Blogger

Bloggers and blogging have taken the world by storm – bloggers have the power to influence millions of consumers. In this digital age, consumers are more likely to trust the word of a blogger than other more traditional marketing tactics and businesses should be paying attention.

So where do you start? How do you approach a blogger without ending up in their spam folder? Why do consumers trust bloggers more than ads or journalists? What are bloggers looking for? What do bloggers need to feature you and your product or service?

The Sunny Bird PR team sent out questionnaires to our network of bloggers to get the answers to these important questions…

- What sort of assets do bloggers look for to feature a particular product or service?

Tip: Ensure all this information is in your pitch

Price point, back link, social media handles, information on the service or product and a link for them to download high res imagery. If the blogger is interested in featuring your product or service, they will be able to get everything they need from your initial email.

Give them the opportunity to receive samples as this allows them to use the product first hand and hopefully fall in love with it! 

- If you were contacted with a pre-written article and hi-res imagery, would you write a blog post around that particular article?

Tip: Tailor-make each blogger approach

Bloggers don’t want recycled news stories or stories that have been covered before. If it is tailored to their blog and audience, they will be more likely to include your story or product in a round up.

- What are your pet hates when it comes to being approached?

Tips: Do your research!

You need to do your research! Be friendly but not over friendly and think to yourself “how would I like to be approached if I was a blogger?”

As a PR company, it is our job to know bloggers and their blogs inside out and back to front.

- What would you say is most important when it comes to how you are approached?

Tips: Make your blogger your friend

Send them emails, read their blogs, follow them on social media, share their posts and show them that you care. A good relationship with your blogger will reward you with good coverage.

As PR’s we understand that it takes time to build a good rapport, but if you stick to these tips with the right pitch, positive attitude and research conducted, there’s a strong chance your product will be all over the blogosphere in no time!

If you would like support with your blogger campaign or outreach give the dream team a call on 01202 293095 or email hello@sunnybirdpr.com.

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

Each week the Sunny Bird PR team research PR campaigns that have made their way into the media and choose one to share that demonstrates effectiveness, reach, simplicity, message and in some cases the opposite – how not to execute a PR campaign. Every month the team chooses their personal favourites and here we deliver them - The Good, The Bad and The Viral from the PR Campaign world. This month we present a social media campaign which we have followed from its inception in January to its completion in March. We’ve also looked at the unlikely pairing of the NHS and dating app, Tinder, to promote organ donation and filling the bad category this month is a tasteless campaign from The London Dungeon for Valentine’s Day.

All Aboard for the Best Intern-ship!

This campaign offered the perfect antidote to the January blues as it whisked us away to the promise of golden, Caribbean beaches, sparkling waters, food and drink and even the promise of money.

Royal Caribbean, the luxurious cruise company, pipped the rest to the post by claiming 2017's first 'best job of the year' stunt. Although these stunts are now quite commonplace with more ‘best jobs’ around than ever before, this one does stand out from the crowd as it was promoted on instagram and was hiring for instagram.

Royal Caribbean announced that it was looking to recruit an intern via Instagram to ‘work’ on three of its cruise ships over the course of three weeks. The lucky recruit would get free food, drink and flights and also a healthy £3,000 in cash. Their role whilst on board the cruise ships travelling across the oceans was to be ‘a hybrid between a photographer, documentary maker and storyteller’ - that can be translated to 'taking envy-inducing pictures and sharing them on Royal Caribbean's Instagram account'.

Royal Caribbean's Managing Director for the UK and Ireland, Ben Bouldin, commented: ‘Our cruise holidays are filled with extraordinary moments and we want to find a talented storyteller who can help us capture the unique experiences that make holidays so special.’

What piqued our interest in this campaign was that Royal Caribbean had only chosen instagram as a platform – typically the age of the average cruiser is over 50 whilst recent statistics show that 90% of instagram users are under 35. The Instagram ‘job’ came after research revealed the photogenic platform had redefined the way people book holidays. The research behind the decision comes from a poll commissioned by Royal Caribbean to find out whether or not social media was overtaking traditional channels of inspiration such as holiday brochures and comparison sites. We’re very sure that Royal Caribbean knows what it’s doing here but we would like to understand the inner workings; is the brand attempting to draw in a younger crowd? Are under 35’s influencers on the over 50s? Our money goes on wealthy families looking to take that last family holiday before their kids fly the nest, they want something fancy that everyone will enjoy and Royal Caribbean seems like a good option – they are on Insta after all – they must be cool!

The coverage has been excellent so even if the Instagram route is flawed at least they’ve achieved a broad wave of PR off the back of this campaign. So far, we’ve spotted the piece in Condé Nast Traveller, Mirror, Metro, Express, Daily Star, CNBC and other media titles around the world.

And the Winner is…

The Sunny Bird PR team really liked this campaign from Royal Caribbean that was spotted back in January, so much so in fact that we have been keeping track on the campaign ever since.

Ciara Flynn, fought off stiff competition from over 75,000 applicants to win the travelling photographer’s dream job and become the official Instagrammer for Royal Caribbean. Ciara's winning photograph of two young Buddhist monks won her three weeks across three oceans with all expenses paid and even a cash prize of £3,000.

The competition was only open to UK and Irish candidates but that didn’t stop almost 350,000 people worldwide posting to the hashtag, hoping that their image might be considered.

The campaign was the brainchild of Ben Bouldin, Royal Caribbean's Managing Director UK and Ireland, and came in response to data showing that more and more people were using social media channels as inspiration when booking their holidays.

'We're confident that throughout the "Intern-ship", Ciara will be able to skilfully shoot similarly amazing moments on board our fleet, capturing the imaginations of the younger generation and inspiring them to consider cruising as their next big adventure.' 

And there we have it, Royal Caribbean are on the hunt for a younger cruiser and quite rightly picked Instagram as the ideal platform to sway this new demographic.

Royal Caribbean has produced a very effective campaign here that generated a huge increase on its social media as well as a tidal wave of coverage including The Mail Online, Metro, TTG media, Travel Weekly, India Times, Dublin People, the Express and many more.

The NHS Teamed up with Dating App Tinder to Find People the Perfect ‘match’

In recent years the NHS has struggled to create a strong and memorable message that encourages young people to sign up to the donation register and in July 2015 the rate of people giving blood and signing the organ donor register fell for the first time in a decade. In 2015, the NHS wanted to get their organ donation message out to a younger audience, so they teamed up with popular dating app Tinder to get their message in front of their core demographic.

The app is usually used to find people a romantic match, however for one fortnight, the app also encouraged users to become organ donors. When people swiped to ‘match’ a prospective love interest, a message appeared on the screen encouraging them to sign the organ donation register with a direct link to the website.

Tinder also created bespoke profiles for some of its more high profile members, including Olympic medallist Jade Jones and Made In Chelsea’s Jamie Laing. These profiles carried the donor symbol and when somebody ‘matched’ with them the user received a message saying ‘if only it was that easy for those in need of life-saving organs to find a match’.

The aim of the campaign was to educate and encourage people to sign up to the register and by targeting this popular dating app, they are directly reaching the younger demographic that they are focused on. It was a clever way to interact with a specific demographic and the campaign was executed in a memorable and effective way that took social media by storm.

London Dungeon Apologises for Dark Valentine’s Tweets

Valentine’s Day is traditionally known to be all lovey-dovey. You would think that taking your partner or family out to a popular tourist attraction around Valentine’s Day you would be greeted by a special ‘all things love’ event. This was not the case for all popular tourist destinations as London Dungeon took Valentine’s Day in a much darker direction this year.

The family tourist attraction had to apologise after a social media backlash over its Facebook and Twitter posts. The tourist attraction was posting dark humour-themed Valentine's jokes on social media, but many were seen by followers as tasteless and sexist if not downright aggressive and offensive.

One social media post read: “What’s the difference between your job and a dead prostitute? Your job still sucks!”

Another said: “Jack the Ripper just messaged. He wants to Netflix and kill.”

Some posts made comments about the appearance of women: “I love a girl that’s a good eater. Female translation: you’re fat.”

A spokesperson for London Dungeon said: “We apologise that our social posts caused offence. Our ‘Dark Valentine’ campaign was a range of posts aimed to highlight the darker side of history and create debate and conversation. As a brand we strive to entertain our guests so they can enjoy the London Dungeon experience – both in our attraction and on social media. However, on this occasion we recognise that some of the topics many felt were inappropriate and therefore we apologise for any offence caused.”

Even Ann Summers who was working with the tourist attraction for one of its Valentine’s Day events thought it was in bad taste. “It is really disappointing to see tweets which are overtly sexist and negative towards women – attitudes we absolutely do not tolerate – or support – at Ann Summers,” the playful lingerie chain told Metro.

At Sunny Bird PR we believe this stunt was done on purpose to create heated discussions in print and on social and to this end it was very effective as it went wild on social and was also picked up by The Guardian, Metro, The Telegraph, Huffington Post and ITV News.

Journalist of the Month

Chichi was a features writer for House of Coco and has now moved into freelance work. Chichi also works around the clock as a fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogger, she has stepped away from wardrobe and make up long enough to answer the infamous Sunny Bird PR questions!

1. What are the 5 words that best describe you? Ambitious, kind, hardworking, diligent and passionate.

2. What magazine do you love reading and why? To be honest I read a variety of fashion, beauty, lifestyle and travel magazines so I don't have a favourite.

3. What is your favourite book? I just started reading 'I'll never write my memoirs' by Grace Jones and I am enjoying it!

4. Which song makes you dance? I don't dance.

5. What has been your best career moment? I have a few:

- Writing for House of Coco

- Working as a brand ambassador for NYX Cosmetics

- Interning at a top PR agency in Leeds

6. What advice would you give your 20 year old self? Be yourself and distance yourself from those who don't respect that.

7. Where are you happiest? When I am socialising with my friends.

8. Who would be your number one dinner guest be and why? (they can be past and present?) Michelle Obama, because she is such an inspiration to black women.

9. If you could have any superpower, what power would it be and why? I'd love to be invisible.

10. If you had to ask us one question what would it be? Describe yourself in one word.

Kickass!

Spring Newsletter

Hot Tips for the New Instagram Slideshows

Instagram is an integral PR tool and as such we make it our business to get to grips with the latest features so when the social giant brought the new Instagram Slideshows we couldn't wait to get to grips with it. We’ve created our first slideshow which can be found on our Instagram feed here and we have also compiled a 'How To' blog so you can get the most from Instagram's latest feature...Instagram Slideshows

Mother's Day Campaign Increased Sales by 2,656%

Our Three Pregnant Dads campaign led to a 2,656% increase in sales, 2,000 shares on one Daily Mail article alone as well as a 1,850% increase in Facebook social media engagement.

We created a Mother's Day campaign for The Book of Everyone that grabbed the media's attention with three middle-aged businessmen wearing 15kg 'empathy bellies'. The campaign was designed to show how much they appreciated all the mums out there by putting themselves in their shoes for a month.

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

As well as creating PR Campaigns, the Sunny Bird PR team also enjoys finding the best of the rest. This haul offers a diverse mix of campaigns from giving money to the homeless, inspiring women after the US election, a 4D tunnel that stimulates all five senses and two unique alcohol brands who want to be THE spirit people drink. Check out the team's choice of PR Campaigns 

Blogger of the Month

Rhiannon Duffin is a Dorset-based, successful lifestyle and fashion blogger who focuses on seaside living, beauty, fashion and accessory brands. Rhiannon took some time out from writing her blog to write ours and answer the infamous Sunny Bird PR questions so we can all have an insight into the world of a glamorous fashion blogger…check out her answers here Blogger of the Month

Sunny Bird PR Rebrand

Since our exciting rebrand, lots of people have been asking us how and why we did it so we put together the above video to explain just that. You can also read all about it on our blog.

 

Sunny Bird PR Rebrand Video

Since our exciting rebrand, lots of people have asked us how and why we did it so we put together this video to explain just that...

Some of you may have already noticed that we've taken the whole 'New Year, New You' thing to a whole new level with a new name, new address, new website, new collateral, new brand colours, new font, new photography etc etc - yes, you've guessed it - we've rebranded!

Sunny Bird PR Rebrand

Some of you may have already noticed that we’ve taken the whole ‘New Year, New You’ thing to a whole new level with a new name, new address, new website, new collateral, new brand colours, new font, new photography etc etc – yes, you’ve guessed it – we’ve rebranded!

Rebrands happen to all kinds of companies and organisations and they are either 'evolutionary' or 'revolutionary' – think M&S – their rebrand positioned them to an entirely new, young and trendy audience while retaining their existing loyal customer base. The intention for rebranding is always the same, ‘to differentiate the business or service in the minds of the target market’, and this was exactly the thinking behind the rebrand from Little Bird PR to Sunny Bird PR.

When I first started Little Bird PR I anticipated that most of our clients would be either national or regional businesses that were based locally. We do indeed have clients based locally but thanks to exceptional growth over the last few years, Little Bird PR actually gained clients from all over the globe. We love our new friends but not all of them get the English colloquialism ‘a little bird told me’, so, we have rebranded to make us more world friendly as well of course to better represent our growth.

A successful rebrand can in no way be rushed and needs to employ the very best in cohesive design across the website, social media, signage and collateral. We employed Hello Big Idea, a creative studio in the U.S to design and implement our transition from Little Bird PR to Sunny Bird PR. It was crucial that our new branding represented the energy and dynamic nature of the team and I felt that Hello Big Idea understood what we were looking for and would know how to translate that ‘feeling’ into branding.

I wanted the new website to showcase the amazing work my team have done and the results that we have achieved for clients. I know from speaking to businesses that seeing tangible results from PR is crucial so I wanted the new website to demonstrate these results clearly and concisely. I wanted to prove to potential clients that an investment in PR with us would achieve their goals and objectives as it has done for our existing clients.

For the rebrand we started out with a mood board that captured our colours and style as well as inspiring images, phrases and textures to help develop and guide the mood of the rebrand. I really wanted the team to be involved with every step of the process as they’ve helped us get to where we are today and I want them to be proud of that and excited about where we’re going next. As Hello Big Idea created different ideas and concepts for logos and branding colours I always made a point of sitting down with the team to get their feedback and to see which styles and designs they preferred. We chose bright, bold, vibrant and fresh colours as we thought this best represented our approach to business and demonstrated that we weren’t afraid to try new things. The colours also evoke a feeling of positivity and really bring the brand to life.

When it came to logos I felt it was important to have our ‘main’ logo which would be on our website and on most of our brand collateral as well as a separate logo specifically for social media as it’s essential in building brands. For the main logo Hello Big Idea developed a signature style logo that incorporated our various brand colours.

It was important to me that we used the best in the business throughout the rebrand to reflect our own approach to business. As a Bournemouth-based company I also felt it was important to employ local companies wherever possible so for the new website imagery we drafted in a great local company, Double Exposure Photographic, to come in and shoot us hard at work for the day so we could use some original and personal shots for the website. It was really important to me that the whole team were involved with the shoot. We planned out the different ideas that we wanted for each page of the site, choreographed the shoot and ensured we were using the new brand colours and working within the new guidelines.

While Hello Big Idea was busy making us an all singing, all dancing, beautiful new website, we worked on getting all the other elements into place. We had outgrown our previous office space so we found a new creative space for the team which we designed to ensure the new interior was in line with our new branding. As well as this, we also needed to think about exterior design so employed BCP, a local signage company, to do the all-important job of letting everyone know where we are.

New stationary was designed for us in the form of thank you cards, compliment slips and business cards. As my team are so individual and vibrant I wanted their personalities to shine through on their business cards and email signatures so they chose their own colour combinations and photos making them fun and diverse while keeping in line with our new brand look and colours.

With this in mind, I decided against the more traditional photo-shoot for the staff and went for a more personal approach. The team have all got such big personalities with different strengths and skills and I wanted their photos to show that. As we speak to journalists all day, every day I think it’s really nice to add that personal touch with a photo of us in the signature so that journalists can put a face to a name (if we’ve not already met them) to help build those all-important relationships.

Another personal touch was asking the team to write each other’s profiles on the Who We Are section of the new website, this was a great exercise and really injected a sense of fun into our new profiles as we’re much too modest to blow our own trumpets!

As I’m sure you can tell, the whole team thoroughly enjoyed the rebrand and were involved from beginning to end which really made it feel like we were all rebranding together rather than it just happening around them. Now, as we start the New Year, we have a new, stronger identity behind us to drive us forward into 2017! For those of you who haven’t met us yet we look forward to meeting you as Sunny Bird PR.

In the meantime, take a look at our brand board and see if it gives you any inspiration for your own rebrand…

Instagram’s New Feature: Instagram Slideshows

As with any new tool on any social media platform, if you find the most effective way to use it, it can earn you 100’s of likes, additional followers and even help you achieve influencer status. Instagram’s latest feature is a brilliantly creative one and we couldn’t wait to get involved and start posting.

As we were doing our mid-morning scroll through Instagram today, we came across the news of Instagram’s latest feature. We’ve been dying to share lots of photos to explain more about the creative concepts behind our PR campaigns without bombarding our Instagram page and followers with too much information. Thanks to Instagram’s new Slideshow feature we are able to share more visual detail when it comes to our Instagram posts.

Without creating a collage or cluster of images on another app, it can be hard to tell the full story of your product, service, experience or a piece of coverage with just one photo. But the day has come for users to now post a collection of up to ten images in one single post. The slideshow posts have a line-up of small blue dots at the bottom of each post to show followers how many images you have in your slideshow and to show them to swipe to the left to see more.

Whilst this brand new feature will require more time to create your everyday post, we have fallen in love with the brand new feature.

How to use Instagram Slideshows:

1.       Gather a collection of images to tell a complete visual story on your phone.

2.       In Instagram, click on the ‘Add Post’ icon in the bottom centre of the app.

3.       In the ‘Add Image’ screen that follows, you will see ‘Select Multiple’ highlighted in grey. Click it.

4.       Select up to 10 files you want to include. Simply tap on the images in the order you want them to appear in and Instagram puts a small blue dot in the upper left-hand corner of each image thumbnail showing you the numerical order your images will appear in the slideshow.

5.       Click ‘Next’ at the top right of the app.

6.       You can apply filters just like a regular image post and then write your caption just as you normally would.

7.       Tag featured businesses/vendors/brands that appear in the images.

8.       Post and celebrate your slideshow!

We’ve created our first slideshow which can be found on our Instagram feed here and we think it’s a great way to get your message, experience or brand concept in front of your followers in a fun and original way. Head over to our feed to check it out.