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UK workers take two weeks’ extra holiday – without leaving their desks
Research sponsored by Captor Group, Europe’s leading workforce management software company, showed that every year the average British office worker takes the equivalent of two weeks’ unpaid leave while at their desks and appearing to work.
Dubbed ‘desk skiving’, the survey showed that workers admit to spending up to 30 minutes of their working day on private web surfing, emailing and texting.
This was just the kind of story that appealed to the UK national media. As a result, it featured in top nationals, including The Times and the Daily Telegraph, business & management media (print and online) and resulted in seven broadcast interviews, six on BBC radio and on ‘London Today’ on ITV.
Six Degrees developed the campaign and supported it with strong ‘sell in’, good photography, while training the company spokesperson and providing access to a media-savvy third-party academic to add weight to the story.
In total, it generated over 45 stories in the target media reaching an audience of over 10 million people.
Answering Newcastle’s call for jobs
US-based Convergys, the world’s largest outsourced call centre company, gave Newcastle a reason to feel upbeat. The announcement of 400 new local call centre jobs was the perfect response to recent bad news from several companies who are moving to “offshore” locations such as India.
Six Degrees supported Convergys’ announcement with regional, national and trade media relations, resulting in interviews with ITV Tyne Tees, BBC NorthEast, Radio Newcastle, Metro Radio and Sun FM as well as coverage on BBC Online. Newcastle’s regional business paper, The Journal, made the news its cover story, and it also featured in The Evening Chronicle and the Northern Echo.
According to Convergys’ Stephanie Wilson the recent campaign has produced a decided shift in perceptions amongst the target audiences:
“The local media initiative significantly helped raise Convergys’ profile as a local employer, thanks to a well thought-out media strategy and exemplary execution.
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that job enquiries have increased significantly following the media coverage, and candidates clearly see us as a good company to work for.
“Furthermore, our employees liked the fact that they are working for a growth company and enjoyed the media coverage.”
First Friday fits the bill
Our clients ABB, Morgan Crucible, Nexans and Saft have experienced the benefits of joining the ‘Engineering Press Editor's First Friday Club’, a cost-effective and hassle-free alternative to the traditional press conference.
The First Friday Club takes place on the first Friday of every month. Around 20 editors from the UK engineering press get together for a lunch in London. They are joined by representatives from three or four of the sort of companies they write about on a daily basis. Before lunch, there is the chance to make a 15-minute presentation on any subject. This could be a new product or technology, a key issue or a general company profile. Afterwards, there's the chance to socialise over lunch in a relaxed atmosphere.
While we know that distribution of press material at First Friday can deliver good results, where the event really scores is in helping to build the closer working relationships with key editors that help to generate first-class in-depth coverage. For example, after Sarah Thomas Cleevely, then editor of Materials World, met Morgan Crucible at First Friday she asked to visit their technical facilities. The outcome was a three-page feature on Morgan’s biomimetic fuel cell technology.
The presenting companies share the cost of First Friday which, for each, is a fraction of the cost of hosting a 'press event' individually, with none of the organisational concerns!
ABB’s university challenge
Six Degrees has been helping ABB to maximise the publicity for the signing of its new long term strategic research partnership agreements with Cambridge University and Imperial College, London.
Cutting edge technology gives ABB’s core businesses in power and automation a distinct advantage over its competition. And a central task of ABB’s R&D team is to transform university research into industry-ready technology platforms. This concept, honed in recent years, comes to life in more than 50 university partnerships in the US, Europe and Asia. Underling the importance of this approach, in 2004 ABB signed new long-term, strategic relationships with Cambridge University and Imperial College.
To promote the signing of the agreement with Cambridge University in March, Six Degrees organised a mini-media tour for Dr Markus Bayegan, ABB’s chief technology officer. This included an in-depth interview with the Engineer magazine and a guest spot on CNBC Europe’s Power Lunch TV programme.
Later in the year Six Degrees worked with Imperial College’s PR department to set-up a breakfast briefing for key technical journalists. This was followed by an in-depth interview with IEE Manufacturing Engineer magazine and Markus Bayegan was also invited back by CNBC Europe to appear on its Morning Exchange.
Getting news on the wires
France-based Nexans is the market-leading global supplier of cable for electrical, telecoms and IT industries – but has historically had a relatively low profile in the UK media. We were appointed to handle Nexans' PR in the UK in order to raise awareness of the company and its capabilities. One of the main priorities has been to arrange a series of meetings and get-togethers with the vertical media in key sectors to enable Nexans’ senior management to introduce themselves and explain the company’s strategy and business activities. Important successes include an automotive round-table event as well as a factory visit to Norway for journalists writing about the offshore oil and gas industry.
Building a reputation from the ground up
When two teleconferencing industry veterans, Tim Duffy, the former head of PictureTel Europe, and Steve Gandy, who set up BT Conferencing in the early 1990s, started up MeetingZone, a new UK service provider offering audio and web-conferencing, they turned to PR to help get the company on the map – even including it in their business plan.
MeetingZone offers an attractive new business model, but is competing with some big established players in the market. The company’s personalized audio and web conferencing service give users round-the-clock access to a virtual 'conference room’, so they can hold conferences whenever the need arises. There are no monthly fees – just charges based on usage. Dial-in numbers and access codes are allocated permanently, so they can be included in email signatures and on business cards.
We developed a corporate PR programme to help raise awareness of the business benefits of this new approach to audioconferencing, and help MeetingZone build market share. It included introductory letters to editors, proactive interview pitching, issue creation/management, opinion pieces, company profiles and customers case studies. Coverage of MeetingZone has been growing in the national and regional press, and on local radio, with at least 30 pieces of major coverage generated in all selected target sectors.
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