Hill+Knowlton Strategies

This is the first in a series of nine blog posts which takes inspiration from a Cabinet Office commissioned report entitled MINDSPACE. The report sets out nine of the most robust (non-coercive) influences on our behaviour, which is captured in the simple mnemonic MINDSPACE:

MINDSPACE (Dolan et al., 2010)

The vast majority of government public policy aims to change or shape behaviour – changing or shaping behaviour and inspiring or engaging people is often a perquisite of many of the work we do for clients at H+K. “Hard” instruments such as legislation or regulation is the most effective way for policy-makers to compel us to act in certain ways. However, these instruments are not readily available, of course, to PR professionals aiming to change people’s behaviour and attitudes towards detergents, gin, football boots and the like – “hard” approaches are not appropriate. Policy-makers are increasingly turning to less coercive measures, such as incentives and sophisticated communications techniques, to change and shape behaviour. These less coercive approaches, summarised by MINDSPACE, are directly applicable to the work we do in marketing, advertising and communications. My series of posts in the coming months will work through each of the influences outlined in the MINDSPACE framework, giving examples and explaining how the framework is applicable to our industry.

+  +  +         #1  Messenger         +  +  +

The way we respond to information depends greatly on the reactions we have to the source of that information.We are heavily influenced by who communicates information. Whatever our considered judgment about the value of a message, we automatically give it more or less weight according to the messenger. For example, we are often swayed by authority that has associations of expertise: public trust in expert public sector workers like doctors and teachers is much higher than for politicians.

Brands understand the importance of ‘the messenger’ with regard to influencing consumer choices and driving sales. Celebrity brand ambassadors are effective marketing techniques, because who communicates determines the consumer response and engagement to brand messages. Marketing spends are increasing in budget for the celebrity brand ambassador - PepsiCo struck a $50 million deal with Beyonce to be Pepsi’s brand ambassador.

Beyonce - Pepsi Brand Ambassador

Of course there are plenty of notable examples in UK/global brand marketing campaigns, and include Walkers veteran Gary Linekar, Marc Jacobs and Taylor Swift for Diet Coke, and Blackberry and Alicia Keys. However, sometimes brands can get it wrong – Alexander ‘Hooray Henry’ Armstrong was dropped in 2009 after 7 years as Pimms brand ambassador, reportedly for being ‘too posh’.

Brad Pitt - Chanel No. 5

In order to quantify and qualify the use of celebrities in marketing campaigns it is important to evaluate their awareness, appeal, and relevance to a brand’s image and the celebrity’s influence on consumer buying behaviour. Advertisers are using celebrities for voice overs, and public relations + communications agencies understand the importance of influential celebrities to engage and shape behaviour. Harnessing the power of celebrities social media platforms can be a very powerful marketing tool. We saw that this week at H+K in which Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry’s Twitter accounts generated a huge amount of consumer engagement with a hashtag campaign for our client Aviva.

Post your comments below on which celebrity brand ambassadors you think are the good, the bad and the ugly!

Follow @AndrewPCBarratt

This week, rather than sharing a variety of work, I am just focusing on one as I think it is for such a fantastic cause:

This weekend Norwich City FC will proudly wear the logo of charity Railway Children on their shirts for their Premier League clash with Everton at Carrow Road. The Canaries will be lending their support for club sponsor Aviva’s UK charity partner, to raise awareness of the fact that one child runs away from home every five minutes in the UK.

Along with fans, NCFC Director Stephen Fry will show his support via Twitter to help raise much-needed funds for the charity. For every tweet or re-tweet posted on Twitter on match day including the hashtag #1every5, Aviva will donate £1 to Railway Children.

H+K worked on this project from the ideas stage right through to executing the activity in conjunction with Railway Children, Norwich City and our client, Aviva. This involved planning activity with the media and, crucially, over social media with a particular focus on Twitter. In order to help promote the activity the team visited the Norwich City training ground on this week (Thursday) to oversee an interview session with the club’s manager Chris Houghton and a photo shoot with him, star striker Grant Holt and representatives of the Railway Children charity.

We will all be on Twitter this weekend to do our bit to help raise as much money for the Railway Children as possible, we hope you will be too.

Also our Pampers team worked out that parents lose up to 4 hours of sleep every night due to their baby waking up but despite this sleep deprivation the mornings are a parents most favourite time to spend with their little ones.   I must say cuddles with my boys are the best way to wake up!

Also just to note, this coming Monday Tim Luckett our Crisis and Issues head honcho will present part of a social media seminar to the Arts Law Forum in London. The Arts Law Forum is part of the alumni of the law firm Squire Sanders,  who also run the event. Guests will include representatives from the National Theatre, Tate, British Museum, Royal Opera House, English National Opera and Comic Relief.

Three main topics will be covered during the day, of which Tim will present the third:

• “Inside and outside the workplace” – how to fairly deal with employees who abuse Social Media and IT (Ramez Moussa)
• “Internet defamation” – the remedies available to commercial organisations (Simon Garbett)
• “How to crisis manage: A case study” –  Global PR and communications agency, Hill & Knowlton Strategies (part of WPP Group), will share some practical advice on how to protect your brand, manage communications and respond to incidents and negative criticism in a systematic and planned manner.

Tim will present two case studies of companies who ‘got it wrong’ and before going on to outline the lessons learned and top tips for protecting brands and mitigating reputational risk.

Have a great weekend all, wrap up warm!

Last week I mentioned the Gillette and Movember partnership, well we opened the shop this week.   The Best a Mo Can Get Barbers is at 10 Newburgh Street, just off of London’s iconic Carnaby Street.  The Barber’s will be open 7 days a week throughout the month of Movember offering free tache touch ups for Mo Bros.   There is a traditional Barbers upstairs, complete with photo booth where you can snap your Movember style and a bar and games room downstairs.  The bar area is decked out with rich leather seating and antique bookshelves where you can select your favourite songs to play on the vintage vinyl player whilst the games area has a vintage collection of poker dice, backgammon, dominoes and chess as well as a Ping pong  and pool table.

Our Healthcare team are getting well and truly into the spirit of Movember…

Our Retail + Leisure team has had an appropriately spooky week launching The Witch Academy for London’s most iconic landmark, the EDF Energy London Eye. This magical school of mysticism and sorcery for children and their families will conduct classes throughout the October half-term break each year. The first ever Witch Academy will focus on story-telling in its opening year. Children will be invited to take part in a spooky inter-active Halloween Storytelling Experience on board the EDF Energy London Eye. Chanting spells and taking part in a variety of exciting activities, children will be called upon to use their best magic skills to free the Head Witch of the Order.   I know for sure my kids will love this!

Several of the executives from our Financial + Professional Services Team’s Egyptian client, Citadel Capital, were in London over the last few days and as we don’t haves  them on the ground in London very often we organised a high level media relations programme for their executives including meetings with print journalists from the FT, The Economist and Wall Street Journal Europe. We also organised broadcast interviews with  CNBC and This is Africa as well as this one from Bloomberg’s The Pulse show with Citadel Capital’s Founder and Chairman Dr Ahmed Heikal.

Our Healthcare team attended Expert Dialogues 2012 this week, a meeting attended by approximately 200 renal oncology specialists from countries all over the world. Presentations from some of the leading experts in the field and exciting new data releases from recently completed Phase III trials were presented. The importance of patient quality of life and the need to validate the most promising predictive biomarkers of disease progression and likelihood of responsiveness to treatment were major points of discussion. Expert Dialogues 2013 will expand on these topics in the context of new data that will emerge within the next year.

Before last weekend’s clash between Harlequins and London Irish,  Premiership Rugby sponsors Aviva and H+K Sports arranged for the players from both teams to go head to head at Twickenham Stoop to prove their skills off the pitch and in the kitchen. With Great British Bake Off contestant Stuart Marston-Smith acting as mentor and judge, Harlequins stars Ollie Kohn, Rob Buchanan and Mark Lambert edged the plucky London Irish trio of Jonathan Joseph, Topsy Ojo and Matt Garvey in a highly competitive contest.  At the final whistle however, Harlequins’ superior handling and finishing skills proved the difference between the two sides with Rob Buchanan picking up the man of the match award and best cake of the day.

London Irish's, Jonathan Joseph, Matt Garvey and Topsy Ojo with their creation of a victoria sponge and Stuart

Not sure what is in the October air but my goodness it has been busy at H+K Towers this week

Monday saw the external launch of our Aviva S2S Mumsnet campaign which is  centred on encouraging parents to talk to their children about running away from home in order to  raise awareness of the issue, and of the Railway children charity.  As its such an important and topical issue, our launch story has gained lots of media interest including Yahoo.com, Female.First.co.uk and Radio 5 Live and is naturally all over the twittersphere

Mumsnet.com Running Away home page

Also on Monday, we launched Family Investment’s Hotspots report which has received widespread national media coverage including seven of the national newspapers reporting the story. If you have somehow managed to miss it, Wokingham is the best place to live to bring up a family.

Hotspots Report Infographic

Our healthcare team has been working hard at the European Society of Medical Oncology’s (ESMO) annual meeting (a huge event in the world of cancer research) which took place in Vienna last weekend. During ESMO the team supported a media roundtable where two leading experts in the field of bone metastases, a severely painful type of bone cancer often associated with advanced stages, were well received by the audience including 14 top-tier European journalists from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.  Don’t just take our word for it, check out this infographic about the hot topics from the meeting

The Healthcare team also recently won some inspiring new business with The Harley Street Clinic in London. Earlier this week, members of the team had the opportunity to visit the clinic’s recently refurbished Paediatric Intensive Care Unit to see firsthand the importance of the unit in providing complex care to very ill children. The team is excited to be working with H+K offices in Kuwait on this project. See more of the great work done by the clinic here

Our Food + Drink team have also had a rewarding week, after over seven months of campaigning for public votes, yesterday the Transform Your Patch team took Fazer from N-Dubz to Dartford Skate Park to celebrate his triumph in Transform Your Patch – a regeneration campaign from Britivic and PepsiCo that has transformed around 165 outdoor spaces across the UK.  Since March, Fazer has been competing against three other celebrity faces, to win an additional £100,000 for an outdoor space he is passionate about, skate parks. Yesterday saw him emerge triumphant against Densie Van Outen campaigning for playgrounds, Robbie Savage squaring up for five-a-side football pitches and Emma Willis championing picnic areas and parks. The £100,000 will now go towards making sure communities get the most out of the transformed skate parks across the UK. Read more about the campaign here.

Our Energy + Industrials team have also been mega busy, not only did they launch Enphase Energy into the UK at Solar Power UK – we set up and staffed media interviews with the key trades to support the launch. Fantastic response so far!

… But they also provided media support for the launch of Sheringham Shoal wind farm off the coast of Norfolk – resulting in a lovely exclusive with Channel 4 News, take a look at the video

And as if that wasn’t enough, we also helped Pampers® and UNICEF launch their “1 pack = 1 vaccine” initiative for the seventh year running, celebrating that together they have helped eliminate Maternal & Newborn Tetanus (MNT) in eight of the world’s poorest countries.

Roll on the weekend!  Hope you all have a good one!

A chat with the Aviva team this morning left me a little nostalgic…..

Apparently some research they have done has revealed that Ford cars  are the most popular first cars of all time in a newly published league table

The Ford Escort and Fiesta top the list, with the iconic Anglia, famously seen flying through the air in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, taking third spot. The Anglia, a British classic, was also the most popular car for first-time owners in the 1960s.

Top 10 most popular first cars of all time

However, Aviva research found that over the last 50 years there has been a fundamental change in who pays for that first car and at what age drivers buy it.

My little Citoren AX (who I lovingly named Chantal) doesn’t seem to feature heavily, but I loved her all the same

Yesterday, our client Aviva launched a new campaign under the banner of Back the Team, calling on the British public to get behind the Aviva GB & NI Athletics Team.

With only a few months left for athletes to prepare themselves ahead of the biggest sporting show this country has ever seen, the UK’s leading insurer has launched a through-the-line campaign, including national press and online advertising, PR, experiential and social media, to bring the nation together in support of the country’s best athletes.

Aviva's Back the Team campaign image

Aviva has been supporting British athletes since 1999 and this campaign will be asking fans to register their support by going to Aviva UK’s Facebook page or visiting www.aviva.co.uk/athletics. Fans will have the opportunity to win some great prizes, including a day with European Champion heptathlete and Aviva ambassador Jessica Ennis, who could be the guest at your village fete or give a speech to local school kids.

As well as posting messages, pictures and videos, people will also be able to show their support for the Aviva GB & NI Team on Twitter by quoting #BackTheTeam.  On the Aviva UK Facebook page and website, fans can get closer to the athletes through exclusive interviews and content.

European Champion, Jessica Ennis, commented:

“Aviva has always supported me and my fellow athletes in the GB Team both when things are going well and also when they are not going so well, and ahead of an important time for athletics, this campaign captures Aviva’s support for athletes. I know I will enjoy receiving everyone’s pictures and messages of support and know all of the team will feel the same.”

This summer, Britain’s best athletes will be going head-to-head at the Aviva 2012 Trials in Birmingham between 22-24 June and competing against the world’s best at the Aviva London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace on 13 & 14 July and the Aviva Birmingham Grand Prix on 26^th August.  The public can back the team at those events by visiting www.uka.org.uk/aviva-series.

How will you Back the Team over the next few months?

I love that in my job I get to see so much of the great work that goes on across the Agency.  One of my highlights of this week is some work we have done with Aviva and Railway Children.

Aviva wants to create an awareness campaign for their UK charity partner, Railway Children as part of their global Street to School CSR initiative. Railway Children fights for the rights of young people alone and at risk on the streets in the UK – which is a relatively hidden issue within UK society. H&K proposed a route that would lift the lid on the issue, profile Railway Children’s vital work and mobilise young people to engage and spread awareness of a cause that affects their more vulnerable peers.

The Street Dance for Change campaign was born. A few weeks ago we did some work with Diversity and then yesterday Andy McCullough (Railway Children) and Alexandra Burke were interviewed live on the BBC Radio London Drivetime show.

Using all of the different collateral we have provided them with, they ran a 6+minute package, beginning by introducing the issue with presenter Eddie Nestor asking listeners to call in if they had experienced running away from home themselves; reporter Jonathan giving an account of the event at the school today and about Alexandra Burke’s passion for the cause, including some very detailed messaging re the stats and facts presented during the session. This was followed by Alex speaking about her role as Ambassador.

Well done Team!

Hello All! Welcome to another edition of the Financial and Professional Services team’s Friday Fiver. Big thanks this week to Dave Chambers, Peter Roberts, Rachel Griffiths, Matt Battersby, Helen Searle and Clare Coffey.

This week we look at the new ASA rules for corporate websites; the fairness of the ECJ ruling and its impact on insurance; the shortcomings of the FSA’s Retail Conduct Risk Outlook; Mr Murdoch’s acquisition of the remaining stake in BSkyB; the impact of the rising cost of children and what Charlie Sheen could learn from Bob Diamond.

ASA Is Watching You

On 1st March the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the watchdog for the advertising industry assumed new powers to regulate “companies’ own marketing claims on their own websites and in other non-paid for space they control“, as the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising was rolled out to cover online properties. The industry reaction has been mixed and there has been a good deal of chatter online about the impact this will have for companies, but it appears that the ASA will take a fairly collaborative approach in enforcing these rules. Regardless though there are plenty of website owners and social media moderators wondering what this means for them, plenty of lawyers doing their best to interpret and not much clarity so far. Certainly there will be a few social media moderators watching what they retweet or share on their Facebook pages.

Is this good for the industry? Probably and certainly for advertisers (and their lawyers) targeting children and young people. Is this good for the internet? who knows – it’s certainly not the free and unregulated space that it was before. One would assume that the originators of the 4,500 complaints that the ASA has recorded since 2008 will be happier. Though from the perspective of a PR man that has heard many times the exasperated cry that ’the ad agency just doesn’t get what we do’ I’d be surprised if the first adjudications have anything to do with the work of a PR agency.

Looking for a cheap deal…?

Women drivers braced themselves for the full impact of equality this week with the European Court of Justice’s ruling that men and women must be treated the same by insurers when assessing risk.  According to the Association of British Insurers, women under the age of 25 could see their car insurance premiums rise by an eye-watering 25%, although men will pay slightly less than they do now.  As we all know, despite the tedious jokes, women are statistically far better drivers than men and therefore a safer bet for insurers. 

Show's Over Sheilas

But it’s not just the Sheilas who are upset.  The ruling has drawn extensive criticism from all from all quarters, from Conservative MPs to consumer groups, to the unlikely (or so you might think) ABI themselves.  Although their members might stand to gain from an overall increase in premiums paid to the industry, the potential disruption along with the marketing advantages of being able to offer competitively priced products, mean the ‘mistaken’ ruling is something they’ve been looking to avoid.

Also, the implications of the ruling are not just confined to car insurance.  Dr Ros Altman predicts that the eight out of ten annuities currently bought by men (less relevant if you are a woman and likely to live longer) are also likely to take a hit as a result of the ruling.

All in all, there appear to be very few winners from this ruling, and gender could be the thin end of the wedge. As Catherine Barton from Ernst & Young points out in the Telegraph, there are many other ‘discriminatory’ factors currently being used to measure that may come under more scrutiny.  So, the question is, when exactly does equality become unfair? 

Less risky conduct?

This week the Financial Services Authority issued its first ever Retail Conduct Risk Outlook. Previously incorporated into the FSA’s Financial Risk Outlook which accompanies its Business Plan, the separation of conduct risk from prudential risk anticipates the FSA’s separation into two new bodies in 2012.

Conscious of recent conduct failures that have had a dire impact on consumers’ experience of financial services and products – Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) mis selling, unclear mortgage terms, and bank’s complaints handling to name a few, the RCRO is an attempt to mitigate and identify potential conduct failure in the future. However, reviewing the RCRO’s list of current issues, emerging risks and potential concerns it is striking how few of them are in any way new. Indeed, most of the risks identified are covered by work already underway as part of the Mortgage Market Review and Retail Distribution Review. Therefore it will be crucial that in identifying new conduct risks, the nascent Financial Conduct Authority must have the tools and powers to do more than shine a light on potential risks and be able to intervene early to avoid market failure. Failure to do otherwise will result in history repeating, albeit under the eye of an authority with a different name.

Rupert completes his Monopoly set….

Pass Go and collect £8bn!

Yesterday’s news that Rupert Murdoch will be allowed to purchase the remaining stakein BSkyB throws up a number of issues. There were two chief complaints made by other media outlets. One, that the deal impinges on the ‘plurality’ of media outlets in the UK by giving News Corporation a far larger stake against their rivals. As Andrew Neil argued, this increases their ability to cross-sell and to subsidise their loss-making newspapers, damaging the position of their broadsheet and tabloid rivals. And two, that the purchase of Sky News (albeit in a separate company of sorts) would mean a return to the ‘bad old days’ of the 1980’s when broadcast news was controlled by just two superpowers, the BBC and ITN.

On a day’s reflection, the first of these is likely to be a far bigger problem than the second, for which there is a strong counter-argument. Regardless of the influence Mr Murdoch will have over Sky News, it still represents a third news broadcaster and in that sense the picture is actually better than the ‘bad old days’ of just two television news outlets. It’s also worth noting that the deal is far from agreed yet – as The Times notes today, investors are queuing up to extract a high price from News Corp for their shares. And one final question as well – what does this mean for the BBC? News Corp has now become an entity twice the revenue size of the Beeb. Does that mean the constant pressure on Auntie to cost cut and justify the license fee will diminish?

Not tonight darling, we really can’t afford it…

Interesting that Aviva reckons this is fundamentally impacting parents’ decision on whether to have more children or not. The report found that 66 per cent of parents would put off having more children because of financial constraints.

It’s a fact backed up by ONS statistics, which show that the once typical average family size of 2.4 children, made famous in the 90s TV Show… is now in fact 1.7 children.

The gloomy picture was reinforced by recent Markit Household Finance Index showed that more than third of households are feeling worse off in the last month, backing up the financial concern that could be literally constricting families up and down the country. 

Why never fat cat actors?

Vanity Fair recently published their list of Hollywood top earners in 2010. Top of the list is James Cameron who earned $257m in 2010, mainly on the back of the phenomenal success of Avatar. Johnny Depp and Steven Spielberg were next in the list, earning $100m and $80m respectively.

These figures are so high they might make even the most hard nosed banker blush. So why were there no newspaper headlines slamming ‘greedy actors’ and ‘fat cat’ directors? Why do we accept high pay for some professions and not others? It might  be said that,  unlike bankers, actors have not harmed the world in any way but can we really say that about Jennifer Aniston who appears at number 25 in the list having made $24.5m in 2010? Anyone who believes that obviously hasn’t seen her new rom-com ‘classic’, ‘Just go with it’!

One actor’s pay has been making the headlines this week though as Charlie Sheen continued to self-destruct on US TV. Amongst the many revelations from these interviews came Sheen’s demand that his pay for appearing on ‘Two and a Half Men’ be increased to $3m per episode. This has caused some criticism in an America where many are still feeling the effects of the recent recession.

So could Charlie Sheen’s behaviour lead to more questioning of actors salaries and their benefit to society? If so, then perhaps they should look to Bob Diamond’s expert performance at the Treasury Select Committee in January for guidance on how to manage this scrutiny. Comparing some of his comments to those of Charlie Sheen this week, they could certainly do a lot worse!

Bob Diamond on banks apologising for the crisis:

“There was a period of remorse and apology for banks, that period needs to be over. We need banks to be able to take risk, working with the private sector in the UK.”

Charlie Sheen on not apologising for anything:

“I’m tired of pretending like I’m not special. I’m tired of pretending like I’m not bitchin’, a total freakin’ rock star from Mars.”

Bob Diamond on the perceived invincibility of banks:

“Banks should be allowed to fail…It’s not okay for taxpayers to have to bail out banks.”

Charlie Sheen on the perceived invincibility of Charlie Sheen:

“Dying is for fools, amateurs.”

Bob Diamond on bonuses:

“I would like to be able to isolate bonuses. I am a businessman trying to run a business. I have to balance what our owners want, what our customers want… I am aware of the emotion around bonuses and we will show as much restraint as we can…we are responsible citizens of the world and the United Kingdom.”

Charlie Sheen on pay:

“Blame the studio for giving me this much dough knowing who they were giving it to.”

More from Bob Diamond on bonuses:

“We have to balance the responsibility we have and the recognition of the environment we operate in”

More from Charlie Sheen on… well….. we’re not really sure

“I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

*Some great research from our client Aviva, but in the interests of transparency we should state that this is not our work