A taste of our success
By admin
We’ve been very busy producing results for our clients in the last few months. Here is a taste of what we’ve achieved.
Swansea-based IT specialists BSS celebrated 25 years in business in the same month as winning the coveted Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status. Effective Communication was perfectly placed – with our new Swansea office – to announce both success stories, significantly raising the profile of the company with coverage in both the Western Mail and South Wales Evening Post business pages. Teifion Davies, managing director of BSS, said: “I would like to thank Effective Communication for the effort that they have put into promoting BSS in recent months. The coverage that we have received is clear evidence that they deliver on their promises, and I am already aware that we are much less of a ‘well kept secret’- and that’s mainly down to them.”
Leading journalists and food critics were invited to sample the French-themed menu at the official opening of the newly-refurbished Brasserie Centrale restaurant, Chats Bar and Leisure Club at the Cardiff Marriott Hotel. Effective Comunication’s close and very productive relationships with the media came to the fore as we organised 15 journalists to attend the event at which Cardiff’s Lord Mayor, Coun Kate Lloyd, carried out the official opening. The evening proved to be a great success and has resulted in a series of excellent food reviews and chef features in publications like the Western Mail, South Wales Echo, Cardiff Life and Buzz magazines.
We also played a key role in the opening by World Boxing Champion Joe Calzaghe of the state-of-the art Orthopaedic Centre of Excellence at Spire Hospital in Cardiff. The Effective Communication team put together an invitation list for the launch event, organised the media, planned the pictures and wrote and issued the post-publicity, achieving coverage in the South Wales Echo, South Wales Argus and the South Wales Advertiser.
When Cancer Research Wales had a major announcement to make, we called in the media. With £1m of money donated by the people of Wales to be distributed by the charity to cancer research projects across North, South and West Wales, it was vital that the whole of Wales was told about it. Effective Communication secured television coverage of the announcement with BBC Wales, ITV Wales and S4C attending the event and interviewing charity supporters and staff. Media coverage also included features in the Western Mail and Wales on Sunday.
Often the boot is on the other foot, with broadcasters calling on us for help, such as when BBC Radio Wales Good Evening show asked us to find a training expert to talk about social mobility in the workplace in Wales. We came up trumps, not only lining up Sarah John, a commercial director with UK recruitment and training specialists Acorn, but also providing the programme with the perfect case study in the form of Wesley Manson. Wesley had started with our client Town & Country Hotels as a skip and bottle boy and, with the support of the hotel chain, worked his way up through the organisation to his current role as Assistant Food and Beverage Manager at one of their hotels.
Christmas certainly came early for The Lord’s Taverners charity when hundreds of revellers attended a record number of their Christmas Lunches. Effective Communication not only organised the pre and post publicity for the four sell-out lunches at the Cardiff Marriott Hotel, but also sent out flyers to promote the events, organised the design and printing of the brochures, wrote the brochures and prepared a PowerPoint presentation for each day. This year’s lunches – four in all – were attended by 800 people.
Algebra Office Technologies launched the revolutionary new Hydra product in Wales which allows six different people to work off a single computer, and this provided us with the challenge of coming up with a picture that immediately told the story. Our models were pupils at Glan-yr-Afon Primary in Cardiff, who found themselves featured on the education page of the South Wales Echo following the launch.
A radio interview with Principality Building Society chief operating officer Graeme Yorston on the effects the UK economic trends were having in Wales also provided an opportunity for a video to be produced for the Principality website. The challenge was that Principality and Effective Communication were given just a few minutes notice to set it up, but within a couple of hours of being called in, the video had been shot and the final cut was ready to go online.
Six delegates from Careers Wales mastered the skills of being interviewed by the media in a training day held in Llanidloes in December. Led by Effective Communication’s managing director and former newspaper editor Alastair Milburn, the course gave delegates an insight into how the media works, the stories it wants, and the pitfalls to avoid when being interviewed. Effective Communication’s media training courses continue to be extremely popular with those who are called on to give interviews to all kinds of media but especially on television and radio.
And finally, National Lottery organisers Camelot decided to stage their first-ever UK community event at a special school in Cardiff. Big Lotto winners volunteered to get their hands dirty to help the community by painting railings and helping to create a new garden area for the children. With Effective Communication responsible for the PR for all Lotto wins in Wales, we planned and managed the media photocall and interviews on the day, achieving coverage in the South Wales Echo, South Wales Argus, South Wales Evening Post and on ITV Wales.
Tags: Acorn, Algebra Office Technologies, BSS, Camelot, Cancer Research Wales, Cardiff Marriott Hotel, Careers Wales, Principality Building Society, Spire Hospital in Cardiff, The Lord's Taverners, Town & Country Hotels
