Blog

Archive for June, 2010

Wines of Roussillon Dessert Trophy competition launches for 2010

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

2009 winning wine and dessertEntries are now open for the fourth UK Wines of Roussillon Dessert Trophy, a quest to find the best pastry chef and sommelier pairing in the country.  Citrus fruit will be the new taste challenge for this year’s prestigious competition as teams from across the UK are challenged to find the perfect pairing of a Roussillon Vin Doux Naturel (VDN) with their own citrus dessert creation.

Sommeliers entering the 2010 competition are invited to select a Roussillon VDN from their own wine list – from Banyuls, Banyuls Grand Cru, Maury, Muscat de Rivesaltes or Rivesaltes – to match with their pastry chef’s citrus dessert.  Citrus fruit is an ingredient which offers endless possibilities for innovative dessert recipes and daring wine and food combinations. These pairings can be further enhanced by adding fresh and dried fruits or other ingredients such as herbs and spices to the dessert. The rich, fruity and complex VDNs from the Roussillon provide exciting flavour and texture combinations when paired with citrus fruit, complementing its strength and concentration of flavour and providing harmonious balances.

Competition entry forms are available from Georgie Hope at Focus PR on tel: 020 7845 6624 or email civr-focuspr@focuspr.co.uk. The deadline for entries is 12 midday on Wednesday 1 September 2010.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Food & Drink | 1 Comment »

Consumer PR work placement: a report from the coalface

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

The current view of work experience placements among university students and graduates alike is that they’re more often than not slave-driving, tea-making, photocopying nightmares. Lucky then that Focus PR allows rather more excitement than being stuck in the doldrums of the stationery cupboard.

Having done work placements at other consumer PR firms where I was consigned to the shoe and accessory storage area throughout the whole of my first week, and expected to sort through the hundreds of shoes that were piled up around me, my experiences so far here at Focus PR haven’t needed to be fantastic to beat that – but they have been. I’ve been doing anything from running errands to get punch bowls, sheepskin rugs and champagne glasses to speaking to journalists.

One particular highlight was a training session about social media and how it can be used during a campaign.  Since I’ve almost grown up with social media and write my own film blog, this was especially interesting. Aside from that I’ve also had a taster of the preparation required for pitching for new business; my task was to find costs for a cow costume among other unusual things! There have been less thrilling things to do too of course – like mounting coverage and accidentally sticking my fingers together – but it’s all part and parcel of this experience. I’ve had a great time so far and I’m not even half way into my time here yet.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Other thoughts | No Comments »

PR Week’s PR & Digital Media Conference, 22 June 2010

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

I spent a really informative day at the ‘PR & Digital Media’ conference yesterday.  The day was crammed full of informative sessions on how to implement social media strategy, engage with followers in a more ‘human’ way, how to build a dialogue with them, using social media in crisis management scenarios, and much, much more. 

The case study I found most valuable was from Mary Walsh, director of communications at Eurostar who talked openly and honestly about the crisis they underwent just before Christmas 2009 where five trains got stuck in the Chunnel due to the severe snow.  Mary was open and honest in her description of what went wrong, why they came under attack, what they did, the lessons they learnt and the social media strategy they now have in place as a result.  It was a real eye opener.

Other speakers of note included Stuart Ross, director of News at TfL who talked about using social media to protect reputation; Tom Nixon, director at NixonMcInnes who provided ideas on who to involve in creating and implementing social media strategy; Gabi Whitfield, communications director for Nissan Motor (GB) who discussed engaging with followers on Twitter; and Ian Williams, director of communications at moneysupermarket.com, whose case study looked at how to work across disciplines and channels to seamlessly deliver messages.

My top five takeouts from the conference are:

1.       Transparency, speed of reply, being honest and ‘human’ are essential for an effective social media strategy and implementation

2.       Organisations should keep social media strategies clear and simple to be successful

3.       Social media  needs to be integrated into the organisation.  It should not just be the responsibility of the PR or corporate comms teams.  Best practice suggests social media should be decentralised underpinned by central guidelines allowing all departments to be involved

4.       Clarity is key.  Shorter PR messages, due to the 140 character restriction on Twitter, are more likely to be misinterpreted

5.       Social media will lead to the death of AVE.  New ways of measuring the success of campaigns need to be identified before you embark on any campaign

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Other thoughts | No Comments »

« Older Entries
« Older Entries