New hires to Howorth

Howorth has announced two new hires with Heather Jacobs joining in the newly created role of editorial specialist and Jessica Smart joining as a senior consultant.

Graham White, managing director of Howorth, said:  “These two hires are necessary due to the continued growth of the business, following another record year in 2010. The role of editorial specialist is a new one and addresses the broader range of writing and content opportunities we are now seeing in briefs. We’re delighted to have both Heather and Jess on board.”

Jacobs has spent the past 16 years working as a journalist, specialising in writing about the media, marketing and advertising industries. Most recently, she spent four years as deputy editor on Campaign Brief and prior to this was editor of B&T. Previous roles include editor of Adbrief, senior reporter on New York-based Shoot Magazine, features editor on B&T and media reporter on Ad News.  Jacobs previously worked in PR at Marcom, Vietnam, on clients including Cathay Pacific, LG, Unilever and Hewlett Packard. In her new role she will work on creative content for Howorth’s clients and across the Ogilvy PR group.

Smart joins Howorth from the UK where she spent the past three years at Weber Shandwick in London. She was an integral member of Microsoft’s pan-EMEA account team working on raising the profile of the company across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to Weber Shandwick she was a junior account executive at Hill & Knowlton London working on clients including Yahoo! and Sony.  At Howorth she will be working across Microsoft and Intel campaigns.

Howorth and Hitachi Data Systems wins ADMA award

Howorth continued to score accolades for its work on award-winning campaigns, with Hitachi Data Systems earning an award for effectiveness (technology section) at the Australian Direct Marketing Association’s (ADMA) awards ceremony last Friday.

Hitachi won for “The Great Information Glut” campaign, which was devised by Howorth to differentiate Hitachi from its competitors and raise its profile. The campaign developed an independent research report that found that one in three organisations across Australia and New Zealand were struggling to manage the excessive growth of digital information within their businesses. The media strategy included a series of 1:1 media interviews with Hitachi execs and third party spokespeople. Following this, Hitachi conducted direct marketing activities in order to further raise awareness of the “information glut” issue, targeting key existing and potential customers.

The ADMA awards recognise effective and creative direct marketing campaigns, which are judged on criteria including business objectives, results and innovative and strategic approach. In total, 154 entries were shortlisted this year.

Socialising the enterprise: a chat with Ogilvy 360DI’s John Bell

John Bell, global managing director of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, visited Australia last week and spoke to BNET about the concept of socialising the enterprise.

John shares his thoughts with BNET’s Phil Dobbie on the opportunities and challenges that business leaders will likely encounter when devising and deploying social media strategies. He also explains the reasons why it’s important to make social media part of the corporate-wide strategy that promotes long term engagement.

Listen to the interview here:

TweePR: Australia’s PR practitioners on Twitter

I just spotted TweePR.com.au, an interesting initiative driven by the school of marketing/communications at the Queensland University of Technology.

TweePR aims to “give a bird’s eye view of what the nation’s public relations gurus are tweeting about. Watch myriad issues unfold – as interpreted by the nation’s masters of PR – all in one place.”

The river-of-news format is a nice touch, enabling you to see real-time messages being tweeted.

There’s also the tweepr top 100 list, which ranks Australia’s PR practitioners from 1 to 100, calculated based on the number of followers, updates and how recent their tweets are.

Howorth-ians in the list are @bdgiesen, @GWhiteOz, @Ofagirl and @deelau.

Spotted: Twitchiker and the Feats of Tweet

Earlier this year, a freelance journalist by the name of Paul Smith (no relation to Paul Smith from the AFR), embarked on an adventure to get from Newcastle to New Zealand in just 30 days.

He put in place a few rules for his journey and unless these were followed, the whole adventure is over and he goes home:

• He’ll only accept help (lifts, a place to stay and food) from other people on Twitter
• He can’t make any plans further than three days in advance
• He can only spend money on food, drink and anything that might fit in his suitcase
• If there’s more than one offer on the table, he gets to choose which he takes. If there’s only one, he has to take it within 48 hours
• If he’s unable to find a way to move on from a location within 48 hours, the challenge is over and he goes home

Fast forward to September, he’s halfway across the globe in much more interesting places than NZ (…sorry Kiwis) and with a whole heap of amazing stories to tell about his travel adventures.

He has also recently embarked on a new project, Feats of Tweet, with an aim of using social media to change the world – one tweet at a time.

These are both great example of social media – used the way that social media is supposed to!

Beyond the looking glass: building a case for compliance

The Australasian Compliance Institute (ACI), the peak professional body for compliance, was beginning from the ground up in establishing a strong mainstream media presence, via a public relations campaign, with the view to becoming the thought leader in compliance.

Howorth worked with the ACI to develop a thought leadership platform underpinned by media relations activities – against the insight that in the current economy, it’s not increased regulation, but effective implementation of regulation, that’s important.

Talking points for the resulting public relations campaign were developed around the notion that while instinct by governments may be to increase regulation to restore confidence and stability, this is not necessarily the answer. Rather, it is the responsibility of both government and business to drive economic recovery by demanding professional behaviour that delivers more than black-letter law requirements – this is what compliance is all about.

Howorth has worked to capitalise on this insight to raise awareness of the importance of a trained and experienced compliance/risk professional within an organisation – a role that had previously been little known and understood. In turn, the public relations campaign raised the profile of the ACI as the peak professional body representing these professionals.

By tapping into topical issues, including regulatory reform in the financial services sector, governance in sporting clubs and levels of executive pay, Howorth has communicated the ACI’s point of view through ongoing media relations activities.

The public relations campaign has resulted in prominent Tier 1 media coverage in publications including The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and Business Spectator.

Brits Abroad – calling all Sydney Poms!

With The Ashes hurtling towards a nail biting finish, most English cricket fans won’t have any fingers left let alone any nails by the end of the 5th Test.

To take the edge off any pre-Test nerves (and life in general), please join us for a stiff drink at the second Howorth ‘Brits Abroad’ event next Thursday 20th August. This month sees the finale of The Ashes, so come along to celebrate the beginning of the last Test (and hopefully the end of the Aussie’s attempt at retaining our little urn).

‘Brits Abroad’ is a gathering on the third Thursday of every second month of like-minded British expats.  There’s no sales talk and no marketing spiel, just a chinwag with some good company and a glass of your preferred poison. A bite to eat will also be provided.

We’d love it if you and your Pommie friends, partners or spouses could join us. Put us in your diary – we hope to see you next week.

Date: Thursday 20th August
Time: 5.30pm – 9.30pm
Where: The Brand Shop, 120b Underwood Street, Paddington
Theme: The Ashes

Do make sure you RSVP your attendance to britsabroad@howorth.com.au or on Facebook

Look who’s talking? Research findings on employee communications

How are Australian organisations managing employee communications during the downturn?

Our sister agency Impact Employee Communications set about  to answer this question and the results were no less than surprising.

Key findings:

• Change communication in these economic times is not seen as a ‘must have’ with 28 percent of respondent organisations affected by the downturn not communicating likely impacts to employees

• More attention is being paid to organisational values with respondents agreeing there has been a renewed focus on them since the downturn

• Despite an external boom, respondent organisations do not anticipate internal use of social media will change significantly over the next 12 months

Impact engaged Sweeney Research to survey 100 public and private sector organisations across a range of industries in Australia. Interviews were conducted with senior business decision-makers responsible for employee communication in large organisations with more than 200 full-time workers from blue and white-collar and service-based roles.  See the full report here.

Work from home, or not? Driving conversation through research

Working from home (or not) is a hot topic for the Australian workforce. With this in mind, Howorth worked on a public relations research project that aimed to drive conversation around the issue of working from home – and find out just which side of the fence Aussies sit on.

For Citrix Online – a technology company focused on enabling remote working via web services – Howorth constructed a public relations program around a research project that compared and contrasted the attitudes of workers and small business owners in Australia, the US and the UK.

Results from research polling company WomanTrend™ Inc. revealed a significant desire to work remotely. In fact, nearly one-fifth of Aussie workers would take a five per cent pay cut to work from home.

Using these findings, Howorth employed a tiered public relations strategy to position Citrix Online as a thought leader on remote working. Howorth engaged with key technology, consumer and small business media outlets to successfully:

• Seed the term ‘Web Commuting’ as an answer to ‘Telecommuting’
• Launch a comprehensive research report titled ‘Worldwide Workplace: The Web Commuting Imperative’ – which included trends relevant for the Australian media
• Used third party expert commentary from experts Joseph Sweeney, Advisor, IBRS and Bevis England, Director of Telework New Zealand

Through media outreach, Howorth successfully raised awareness around remote working trends and achieved more than 20 pieces of online, print, radio and media coverage including:

• News.com.au
• The Australian Financial Review
• Smart Company
• NOVA 96.9
• 2GB Sydney

The media outreach also drove social media coverage via blogs on local small business websites and Twitter chatter. Resulting interviews included discussion around the benefits of remote working technology including Citrix Online’s GoToMeeting, GoToMyPC, and GoToAssist.

Invitation: Brits Abroad – calling all Sydney Poms!

As the rain begins to fall and the nights draw in, our thoughts are inevitably cast back to the great British summer. Strawberries and cream, sporting disappointment, Pimms and lemonade, knotted hankies and flash floods – June back at home is a very different prospect.

So, with that in mind, please join us for the first ‘Brits Abroad’ event: a gathering of like-minded expats for cold drinks, warm food and happy chatter. There’s going to be no sales talk and no marketing spiel, just a chinwag with some good company and a glass of your preferred poison.

On the third Thursday of every second month we’ll be decking out the Ogilvy House Level 5 bar at 72 Christie Street in all the British pomp and circumstance. Thursday June 18th will see the  inaugural ‘Brits Abroad’ event, so please put us in your diary.

This month sees the muddy glory of Glastonbury, so break out your wellies and hippy threads to join us as we celebrate the great British festival. We’ll be rocking out to classic sets, chomping festival nosh and avoiding mud-covered crusties – and we’d love it if you and your Pommie friends, partners or spouses could join us.

• Date: Thursday 18th June
• Time: 6.30pm – 9.30pm
• Where: Level 5 Bar, Ogilvy House, 72 Christie St, St Leonards
• Theme: Glastonbury Glory

Do make sure you RSVP your attendance to britsabroad@howorth.com.au

See the Facebook Event here

Cheerio!

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