What We've Been Up To This Month...

We Organised Bournemouth's Biggest Ever Public Street Art Project Reaching Over 4 Million People!

The meticulous execution of this supersized event led to over 20 pieces of coverage in just two days with a reach of over four million people, an advertising value equivalent of over £300,000. This heroic coverage was achieved across the BBC, radio, online and in print – all of which either used our press release or credited Ambassadeur Art for the photography and video footage.

Latest Technologies & How They Can Be Used In PR

A review of Greenwood Campbell's insightful session on AR, VR and chatbots and how they'rey being used by big brands such as Coca Cola and Robinsons.

Journalist of the Month

Nicky Findley is one of our favourite local journalists, she's a features writer for the Bournemouth Echo, Advertiser series, Dorset Society, Seven Days Magazine, Taste and The Guide. Nicky has taken a few minutes out from writing about the best county in the UK to answer the infamous Sunny Bird PR questions...

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

This month's PR Campaigns chosen by the Sunny Bird PR team include colourful street art in cities across the country, a seagull in Weymouth teaching us some environmental lessons, a project in the US rewarding people for recycling and a war against the Best Before date...

We Organised Bournemouth’s Biggest Ever Public Street Art Project Reaching Over 4 Million People!

How could we get national coverage for a Bournemouth-based art gallery?

Most independent galleries are lucky to get regional coverage, we weren’t content with that. We wanted to get both regional and national coverage for our client, Ambassadeur Art, as the resident artists are of the calibre to draw collectors from all over the UK. The gallery, which we launched in May 2017, needed some new news to speak to press about since the hubbub of the launch had died down.

That’s when the idea of a giant street art project was born.

The resident artists at Ambassadeur Art found the spot they wanted to paint, one of Bournemouth’s busiest tourist spots, Pier Approach. The first step was to get the council onside, without them this project wouldn’t have been possible as it’s council land we wanted to paint on. As Bournemouth is a family holiday destination, the image of Spiderman holding an ice cream was suggested to tie in with the summer blockbuster.

Once terms had been agreed with the council we needed to source enough artists to complete the project in record time causing minimum disruption to the thousands of holidaymakers on Bournemouth pier. The team used social media to source these volunteers and also worked with the Arts University Bournemouth inviting their students to work on the project as well.

The project took three days to complete with the third day culminating in ‘The Big Reveal’ where the supersized painting would be officially finished. We organised The Big Reveal to invite the public, local dignitaries and most importantly the media to the site together. To encourage as many people as possible to come down for The Big Reveal, the team arranged free ice creams and face painting to anyone that came down in superhero fancy dress. Paid for social media was also used by the Sunny Bird PR team to promote the event to key demographics ensuring maximum attendance on the big day.

To give media the best assets we arranged for a professional photographer, a time lapse video and drone footage of the Big Reveal. To ensure media attendance on the day, Sunny Bird PR called all the broadcasters and regional press to book them in for the big event. To tie the supersized superhero to the gallery, Sunny Bird PR ordered Ambassadeur Art branded balloons and flyers to be handed out on the day.

The whole event was managed from start to finish without a hitch, the Big Reveal was attended by the Mayor and Mayoress of Bournemouth who shook hands with an artist dressed as Spiderman as he arrived via the pier zip wire to deliver the final flourish to the painting. The supersized superhero was surrounded by families and children all dressed up as superheroes making for great photos and video footage.

The meticulous execution of this supersized event led to over 20 pieces of coverage in just two days with a reach of over four million people, an advertising value equivalent of over £300,000. This heroic coverage was achieved across the BBC, radio, online and in print – all of which either used our press release or credited Ambassadeur Art for the photography and video footage.

The success of this project relied on the collaboration of so many people and we would like to take this opportunity to thank the following for their help and support on this, Bournemouth’s Biggest Ever Street Art Project: Michael Corica, Matthew Corica, Iain Alexander, Callie Onslow-Bartlett, Miroslav Lucan, Dairo Vargas, Julian Butterworth, Christian Lawson, Grace Lovelass, Sian Ferreira, Nicola Goode, Nick Maguire, Lois Clark, Morven Shortt, Emily Knights, Neil Woodman, Jenny Thorne, Sam Spinks, Thao Nguyen, Alice Burrett, Ibi Azab, Joshua Moseley, Jessica Russell, Jago Cremer-Roberts and Natalie Carr.

Journalist of the Month

Nicky Findley is one of our favourite local journalists, she's a features writer for the Bournemouth Echo, Advertiser series, Dorset Society, Seven Days Magazine, Taste and The Guide. Nicky has taken a few minutes out from writing about the best county in the UK to answer the infamous Sunny Bird PR questions...

1. What are the 5 words that best describe you? Lives Life To The Full

2. What magazine do you love reading and why? Runner’s World. Running with my dogs is the best start to my day – it’s a quick, inexpensive way to keep fit (I also love my food and don’t have enough will power to diet!) and it keeps me sane as it gives me time to clear my head before I get to work.

3. What is your favourite book? I’ve just re-read Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen and it is still one of my all-time favourites.

4. Which song makes you dance? Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader 

5. What has been your best career moment? Being promoted to women’s editor in the late ‘90s. Although this role doesn’t exist these days it was great fun while it lasted as we got lots of freebies and spa trips!

6. What advice would you give your 20 year old self? Always be true to yourself and never be afraid to take a risk.

7. Where are you happiest? In our camper van in the mountains with my family and dogs.

8. Who would be your number one dinner guest be and why? My perfect dinner guest would have to be Hugh Jackman to see if he really is as awesome as he seems –  not only can the guy sing, dance and act, he’s funny, sporty and veryeasy on the eye too!

9. If you could have any superpower, what power would it be and why? To be able to control time so I can pack more into my day and visit different eras.

10. If you had to ask us one question what would it be? What gives your company the edge over other PR firms?

Our creativity – we work with clients that don’t always have new news so we make the news for them!

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad & The Viral

This month's PR Campaigns chosen by the Sunny Bird PR team include colourful street art in cities across the country, a seagull in Weymouth teaching us some environmental lessons, a project in the US rewarding people for recycling and a war against the Best Before date.

Dulux paints the town…colourful

Dulux’s relationship with its consumer was typically conducted through a giant, shaggy dog until the brand’s colour campaigns came along. There have been a series of these ranging from partnerships with Olympians to injecting colour back into the prohibition era. Our favourite colour campaign from Dulux is this one; an outdoor PR and experiential campaign that saw illustrators paint city murals across the UK to demonstrate how colour can transform surroundings.

The campaign, called 'Colour Britain' comprised of eight giant murals and artworks hand painted onto canvases in town squares around the country.

The sites were designed by illustrators to celebrate stories of history, heritage, colour and culture from cities across Britain.  Dulux wanted the canvas murals to create a positive atmosphere in high streets and town squares with their bright hues. The public chose local stories to inspire the artworks, with Liverpool’s featuring The Beatles, Birmingham’s celebrating the modern British curry and London’s highlighting the iconic black cab.

The eights murals were painted at a location chosen by the public using #colourbritain and the illustrators included Anna Kilpelainen, Adrian Johnson and Emily Forgot. Interviews with the artists and time-lapse videography of the installations were also designed which formed the basis of social media content for the brand.

"We believe that life is a story that deserves a colourful backdrop and as such this initiative champions use of vibrant colour in unusual locations to truly brighten people's daily lives," said Johnny Corbett, Dulux Marketing Manager.

Getting the public involved in this experiential campaign from the start meant that when the murals were going up the locals were invested and interested. This natural pride in #lovewhereyoulive would have encouraged a steady flow of social media posts allowing the Dulux campaign to be shared outside of those eight cities.

Fun, regional campaign gains national interest 

Isn’t it a pain when a seagull sneakily steals a chip out of your hands?! A recent regional PR campaign has gained traction within the national media by using some fun, cheeky seagulls to spread an important environmental message.

Litter Free Coast & Sea is a community campaign that aims to reduce marine and beach litter and improve bathing water quality in Devon and Dorset. The latest campaign, cleverly named ‘don’t feed the locals’, aims to highlight the problem that litter can cause when it comes to greedy gulls. Rubbish left on beaches encourages seagulls to frequent the area and not only can seagulls be a pain when they decide to harass and steal food; they also contaminate our beaches and sea with their poo.

Litter Free Coast & Sea hosted two events along Weymouth seafront during half term, to get the message out to visitors and locals about not feeding the seagulls. Two people in giant seagull costumes visited the seafront and posed for some well-timed, humorous photographs. Their cheeky nature created lots of laughs and helped spread the message and the story was picked up by both The Metro and The London Evening Standard.

This is a great example of a regional PR campaign that has gained national exposure due to its simple and fun photography.

Rinse, recycle, repeat your bathroom empties

Rinse, Recycle, Repeat is a national recycling program in the U.S for beauty and personal care products that motivates the next generation to make an impact on the planet by recycling their empty beauty products.

Garnier, TerraCycle and DoSomething.org launched a ‘Rinse, Recycle, Repeat’ national campaign and college competition with YouTube personality Remi Cruz, with the aim to educate and raise awareness about the next generation to responsibly recycle their beauty empties. The aim is to divert 10 million beauty and personal care empties from landfills by the end of 2017.

National Campaign

People who wanted to participate in the national campaign had to sign up online at DoSomething.org/rinse, decorate a bathroom recycling bin and share a picture with DoSomething.org on the "Prove It" page online or by texting RINSE to 38383 to be entered to be in with the chance of winning a $5,000 scholarship.

Once the bin was filled with 4.5kg of empty bottles, participants could print a free shipping label to send their empties to TerraCycle to be responsibly recycled.

College Competition

As well as the national campaign, on April 1st, a college competition kicked off on 50 college campuses in America to collect the most empty bottles. The college team that collected the most were rewarded with a garden for their community, furnished by Garnier and TerraCycle. The winning college will also receive a $2,000 scholarship to thank them for their commitment to keeping empty beauty bottles out of landfills.

As this campaign is on-going, results are yet to be finalised. To watch the video on how to transform your bathroom, click here.

It’s bananas! How confusing food labels make us throw away perfectly fine food

Confusing food labels may be in for a makeover as The Food Standards Agency, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the not-for-profit Waste & Resources Action Programme are revising the current standards for “best before” type food labelling in an effort to reduce waste across the UK.

To bring attention to the matter, they have compiled a number of tips on how households can reduce their food waste and food bills by smartening up to labels, proper food storage and buying reduced items. The message is strengthened by statistics on how much food we waste in the UK, we were shocked to discover that every day we throw away six million potatoes, three million apples and one million bananas! The campaign also includes an interview with a woman from East Sussex, who explains how she cut her family’s food bill by £500 per year by shopping at stores offering products close to or past their best before-date.

The message behind the campaign is that we need to rethink food labels and reduce waste for the sake of sustainability, but also that doing so is a win-win for everyone; we can use less resources and save some money along the way! It’s a great message as it is one that everyone can get on board with as most of us have found ourselves inspecting our potatoes to see if they are still good, or Googling what on earth “best before” actually means.

This feature was initially spotted in The Mail on Sunday (1,236,839) and has since been picked up online by the Telegraph (146,748,200), The Sun (68,678,330) and the Metro (47,081,468), making it a huge success both on and off line Let’s hope the message gets across and we waste less food as a nation – we’re all being much more careful now after reading it!

Latest Technologies & How They Can Be Used In PR

Attending Greenwood Campbell’s event on Thursday 6th June gave us an insight into the potential of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in the world of commerce, marketing and PR. These technologies have only recently reached consumers, with Pokémon GO proving to be a hit for AR as the third most downloaded app in 2016. These technologies are also proving popular in the commercial worlds of retail, health, travel and entertainment. 

Bertie Millis from Virtual Umbrella kicked off the evening by introducing everyone to the world of Virtual Reality (VR); computer technology that uses virtual reality headsets to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user's physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment.

A person using virtual reality equipment is able to "look around" the artificially generated world and interact with virtual features or items.

Working with Virtual Umbrella, Robinsons, conducted a PR stunt using VR in one of London’s busiest train stations. People were invited to sit in an umpire’s chair at a tennis court in Waterloo station and using a VR headset were able to watch Wimbledon live giving them a 360 degree view of the game. As people queued for the VR experince, they were offered a new Robinsons’ flavoured drink which gave them the chance to win prizes including VIP Wimbledon tickets.

Mikela from Blippar followed Bertie and explained the difference between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality; VR being a program that takes over your senses by putting on a headset and sometimes headphones, whereas AR superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, on a phone or tablet.

Blippar works with brands and businesses to create exciting and innovative campaigns where consumers can scan products using the Blippar app to explore offers, recipes, games and much more.

Blippar has worked with Coca Cola enabling Blippar app users to scan a branded bottle or can. The scan pops up with a juke box playing the top tracks in the UK on Spotify, giving the user an incentive to use the app.

A fantastic event from Greenwood Campbell, giving us an insight into what is currently being used by big brands such as Coca Cola and Robinsons to keep them ahead of the game. Campaigns such as Robinson’s Waterloo VR Wimbledon stunt is a great example of how VR can support a PR stunt and Coca Cola’s campaign with Spotify shows how AR can be used to enhance the consumer experience and extend their journey.

The event has got us thinking about how we can use these exciting technologies for our clients.

If you think they could work for your business get in touch with the Sunny Bird PR team and we’ll wow you with some ideas on how you can harness this fun, new technology. Give us a call on 01202 293095 or email hello@sunnybirdpr.com.

What We've Been Up To This Month

How We Got 70 VIPs to a Launch Event

Las Iguanas came to us in advance of opening its first Bournemouth restaurant asking for support on the all-important launch event. Our regional knowledge was required for a marketing strategy, regional media relations and most importantly, getting VIP guests to the launch event.

How We Improved Our Social Media

We make it our business to know the ins and outs of industry favourites Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. One of the best ways for us to be the best is to make the Sunny Bird PR channels an example. As the channels change the way they do things, we need to change with them so here we have outlined the changes we’ve made to our own channels as we adapt to achieve the best results.

Bye Bye Berliner

With news that the Guardian and Observer are becoming tabloids, the Sunny Bird PR team discuss the pros and cons of tabloid, broadsheet and Berliners...

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

This month's PR campaigns include an experiential from our favourite tonic, an equality message from an ice-cream giant and the best salescreature in the Czech Republic...

journalist of the Month

Gemma Ralph is the Deputy Editor at Hospitality Interiors magazine. A self-confessed foodie, fairy light fiend and lover of all things cosy, she has taken a few moments away from glam interiors to ask the infamous Sunny Bird PR questions for Journalist of the Month…

Journalist of the Month

Gemma Ralph is the Deputy Editor at Hospitality Interiors magazine. A self-confessed foodie, fairy light fiend and lover of all things cosy, she has taken a few moments away from glam interiors to ask the infamous Sunny Bird PR questions for Journalist of the Month…

1. What are the 5 words that best describe you? Perceptive, odd, bookworm, nosy, romantic

2. What magazine do you love reading and why? Women’s Health – I sit and read it cover to cover every month because it has so many in-depth and inspiring articles.

3. What is your favourite book?  This question is my nemesis, I LOVE all books. I’d have to say Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf as she is my absolute hero, but if I could sneak a cheeky close second in it would be Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

4. Which song makes you dance?  Any song that comes on when I’m 5+ drinks down…I’m definitely not a natural when it comes to dancing!

5. What has been your best career moment?  I count myself lucky any time I get a sneak peak of new interiors, sometimes when they’re still building sites. A highlight would definitely be touring Mondrian London with Tom Dixon and hearing all about his inspiration and vision for the project – I’m so privileged to be part of such an interesting and creative industry.

6. What advice would you give your 20 year old self? Don’t devote so much of your headspace to other people and their opinions of you.

7. Where are you happiest?  Probably when I’m in a restaurant with good food and drink.

8. Who would be your number one dinner guest be and why? I’d say Bill Murray – he’s immensely talented, doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, and I think he would have some epic stories to tell … also I might have a slight dad-crush on him!

9. If you could have any superpower, what power would it be and why?   I think I would choose the ability to time travel – I’ve always felt like I was born in the wrong era, so I’d love to travel back in time to experience different periods and historical events.

10. If you had to ask us one question what would it be? What would you say is the most rewarding element of your work?

The team all had the same answer – seeing the coverage they’ve achieved come out in publications and online – our favourite was of course in Hospitality Interiors!

How We Got 70 VIPs to The Launch Night of Las Iguanas

Las Iguanas came to us in advance of opening its first Bournemouth restaurant asking for support on the all-important launch event. Our regional knowledge was required for a marketing strategy, regional media relations and most importantly, getting VIP guests to the launch event.

To source the most appropriate marketing solutions based on the core demographic of Las Iguanas as well as sourcing VIP guests.

Photos by Event Photographer Paul Underhill

To obtain the best advertising for the launch we researched the demographic for Las Iguanas, approached all suitable media outlets including print and radio, sourced media packs, listening figures, advertising packages and advised on where best to place the marketing budget.

Las Iguanas targeted the Sunny Bird PR team with securing 40 VIP attendees from a select group of local journalists, local bloggers, local businesses, local tourist attractions and the Bournemouth University journalists. The team thoroughly researched the guest list and sourced contact details to invite each guest personally. These invitations were managed, followed up, confirmed with table bookings and reminder emails to ensure attendance.

Photos by Event Photographer Paul Underhill

To enable first class coverage, the Sunny Bird PR team researched local event photographers and recommended the best to Las Iguanas. This photography could then be used for press, bloggers, by the Las Iguanas team as well as by Sunny Bird PR to promote the launch afterwards.

The Sunny Bird PR team also liaised with local press to secure coverage in advance of the launch.

We were originally tasked with a target of 40 VIPs, the team smashed this and had 70 VIPs attend on the night!

Photos by Event Photographer Paul Underhill

The evening was a great success, we had our VIP bloggers posting photos on their social media channels all evening showcasing the food, cocktails and entertainment. The Sunny Bird PR team followed up with each guest individually the next day, thanking them for attending and sharing the post-event press release and photography to secure post-event blogs or coverage. Coverage appeared in the local paper, local magazines, online as well as on the blogs and social media channels of Bournemouth’s best bloggers.

The Brand Communications Manager for the Las Iguanas group commented: “Thank you ever so much for everything it really was a brilliant evening and I’m just so happy with how everything went.”