Just when you thought it was safe to leave the home, the big freeze is back with a vengeance. And this time it means business. Literally.

According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, Britain is on course to take a hit of €1.1bn from the harshest winter in decades (oh how us PR folk love a good stat…).

And it’s ‘snow joke’ (…and a well worn pun) in Europe either with the German economy predicted to lose up to €2 billion in lost activity - 0.4% of  GDP in Q1.

Thankfully there are a growing number of virtual businesses out there that are weather proof, and can work from anywhere at any time.  And the stalwarts here at The PR Network are living proof of ‘business as usual’ as we continue to busy ourselves whilst the rest of the UK skids to a halt.

Indeed, in my first week here at the PRN, I have certainly been encouraged by the number of new business leads and enquiries we have received in the opening weeks of 2010, across all aspects of our business.

Who knows, perhaps a sign that - whilst the roads, rivers and railways are frozen over - maybe, just maybe the economy is starting to thaw.

James

Happy New Year!

We wanted to share some positive news to end a rather cold, icey week in Blighty! The PR Network is expanding! We are pleased to announce the addition of a director to our team. This, combined with our ever expanding network of over 400 senior PR consultants with presence on every continent in the World, proves that 2010 is going to be an exciting milestone in PR Network history.

We are delighted to welcome James Read to our team. James is joining as a director and will work with me and Nicky to build The PR Network’s presence as a leading player in the virtual PR world. James will be involved in all aspects of our business and we are excited to have him on board.

Before joining The PR Network James was a Director at Citigate Dewe Rogerson. During his ten years at CDR James gained a reputation for his ability to interpret and deliver against a broad range of corporate and consumer briefs, giving him invaluable experience across multiple disciplines and sectors. His eclectic mixture of past clients include Santander, Halifax, LloydsTSB, TalkTalk, AOL, Fujitsu Siemens, Logica, EDS, Serco, Kwik-Fit and Halfords.

Here’s to a really successful 2010 for all of our associates from the ever expanding PR Network team!

We’ve just finished a three month project for price comparison website www.PriceGrabber.co.uk, which aimed to get media coverage for the website during the Christmas gift buying season. We put a great team of consumer PR specialists on the account, who together had lots of experience promoting online brands including other leading price comparison websites.

The campaign ran from Oct - Dec and the team delivered some fantastic results including coverage in the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, Sky News and C4. This is traditionally a highly competitive space but through a creative approach and constant interaction with journalists and bloggers we made sure that PriceGrabber.co.uk enjoyed a significant share of the coverage opportunities available.

We’re now doing some more work this month to keep up momentum, and talking to PriceGrabber.co.uk about an ongoing relationship. Our client had this to say about the campaign:

“The PR Network delivered an impressive PR campaign for us during the critical Christmas shopping season. Their team of three senior PR consultants came up with creative story ideas on a weekly basis, allowing us to tap into consumer shopping trends and keep ahead of our competition. On the strength of the project results, I’m hoping to engage their services on a retained basis throughout 2010.”

Michelle Kane, Public Relations Director, PriceGrabber.com

A great start to the New Year for The PR Network!

Nicky

London, 30 November 2009 – Ashridge Consulting has given The PR Network a project to promote its Virtual Working practice group across Europe. The PR Network’s freelance associates will run a print, online and social media campaign in the UK, Germany and Scandinavia in 2010. The objective is to position Ashridge as a pioneer in the field of virtual working consultancy, and educate business leaders regarding the business benefits of introducing virtual working in their organisations.

Ashridge Consulting, the consulting arm of Ashridge Business School was attracted to The PR Network concept, which is based on delivering PR services through a network of 400+ talented senior PR consultants. The PR Network is a virtual business run by a small core team and its campaigns are enabled by smart use of the latest technology including Apple “MobileMe”, iPhones, Skype and Webex. Clients from blue chips to start ups benefit from The PR Network’s high value business model.

The campaign will be managed from a UK hub led by a PRN associate who specialises in HR and workplace management. She will direct the activities of the PRN partners in Germany and Scandinavia, with Sweden and Denmark representing the key Nordic markets for Ashridge.

Toby Roe, Corporate Communications Director at Ashridge commented, “The PR Network understand the approach we take to virtual working as they practice what they preach and so were a natural partner for this work.”

About Ashridge Business School

Ashridge Consulting is a subsidiary of Ashridge Business School, providing innovative consultancy to organisations (private, public and charitable sectors) from around the world that are undergoing organisational development and change. Based on ongoing research, Ashridge Consulting works with global teams and leaders to improve their virtual working and leadership practice. In most cases, the consulting work is carried out 100% in the virtual space. Recent clients have included Alfa Laval and Danfoss.

www.ashridge.org.uk/virtualworking

96% OF FREELANCERS ENJOY BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE

Freelance PR consulting network The PR Network conducted a survey of its freelance associates in November 2009, to support National Freelancer Week. There is a trend towards freelancing that extends across industries, and the survey results give some insight into the rationale behind this:

Headline findings:

• 96% of freelancers say their quality of life has increased since they started freelancing

• 53% believe social media and its impact on communications will have the biggest impact on their future freelancing career

• 48% say what they love most about freelancing is the flexibility it offers them, with 40% enjoying the fact they are their own boss

• 77% earn the same or more than before they started freelancing

• 69% say that their freelance career would be improved still further if there were less peaks and troughs in terms of workflow

“Our associates are all senior consultants, many of whom have 15 years+ experience working in-house and for leading agencies before going freelance,” says director Georgina Blizzard. “As the survey shows, most associates have a very positive experience of working for themselves or as part of one of our freelance teams. It’s about being able to pick and choose assignments and deliver first class work - without the constraints of set working hours in an office.”

The PR Network works with blue chip, SME and select agency clients to plug team gaps with senior consultants, and to deliver PR and communications consulting services through specially built freelance teams. Founded in 2006, over the past four years we’ve seen clients become a lot more receptive to working with freelancers. This trend is set to continue through 2010 and beyond, as virtual working becomes an even more established and progressive way of working life.

Our clients include Disney, Adobe, Experian, Deloitte, MasterCard and NEC.

-Ends-

We were in yesterday’s Sunday Times in a piece on the rise of virtual working - check out http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6872691.ece

We’ve just won an exciting project to promote PriceGrabber.co.uk as the market’s best price comparison site for shopping this Christmas. We have a great team of three consumer PR specialists on the account, who will be running some creative consumer campaigns and exciting competitions in the run up to the festive season. Check out www.PriceGrabber.co.uk for the best deals on the web this Christmas.

We’re delighted to announce that we’re partnering with new social media agency The Funky Agency (www.thefunkyagency.com) to deliver social media and digital marketing services to our clients.  Like our clients, George and I find it hard to keep on top of developments in this fast paced brave new world and certainly lack the time to communicate effectively to our various social networks. The Funky Agency, set up by a team of several PR Network associates with a mix of PR / marketing / technical experience behind them, offers a great solution. The team at Funky will work with you (or your clients if you’re an agency) to use all the main social networking websites and online tools to establish, build and optimise your online voice. They have been using us as a very willing guinea pig and we love the fact that we’re communicating with our contacts online through all the key channels with minimal effort or time expended.

We will be introducing The Funky Agency to our blue chip and PR agency clients. The team offers a very affordable white label service to agencies who don’t specialise in digital, but need to offer a digital service alongside the traditional programmes.

Claire Burdett, co-founder of The Funky Agency says:

“Coming from a marketing and editorial background, I know how difficult it is to integrate traditional methods of marketing and promotion with the array of digital techniques that must be applied to contemporary campaigns.  All of us at The Funky Agency are seasoned professionals and know how to take the strain from our clients and provide a comprehensive Social Media management service that integrates fully with other elements of the marketing spectrum to leverage maximum coverage and profile.”

The Funky Agency is a specialist Social Media management, digital marketing, design & development agency.  It has expertise with both B2C and B2B clients and works directly with companies to enhance their brand profile, websites and development as well as providing an outsourced team for PR agencies.

For further information on The Funky Agency please look at www.thefunkyagency.com
Or contact Claire Burdett on: team@thefunkyagency.com or + 44 (0)7788 887534

Or speak to me or George and we’ll introduce you!

Cheers,

Nicky

I spent the day at Seedcamp (www.seedcamp.com) yesterday as a PR “mentor” to various tech-based start ups from around Europe. It was a fascinating day in terms of the sheer variety of ideas showcased at the event, many of whom share similar challenges as they take their product / service to market. It was great to see that entrepreneurialism is able to flourish again with the support of seed capital and - just as important - getting knowledge and support from industry figures who have been there before. 

I met an innovative comedy website for the worldwide Arab community; a software company that has developed diagnostic tools for finding out what is wrong with your dog, and a social networking platform vendor. An Israeli mobile software company was particularly interesting to me with my tech b2b background & perspective. They all shared a passion for their business and a commitment to work 24/7 to make it a success. 

At various stages of the start up life cycle, these companies all wanted to know how they could let the world (or at least their local market) know of their existence. Many companies still take a “build it and they will come” approach, and are nervous about burning through cash too fast on expensive marketing & advertising strategies - yet they need customers and in some cases investors, partners and employees. We talked about working out who they need to talk to, what they need to be saying, and how to reach those people.  Thinking about how they take in their information - reading (print media, online media and generally on the web), attending events, speaking to peers - is a good place to start. Most companies at Seedcamp have little to invest in PR, but a considered approach to reaching their market will start engaging some key influencers even at this early stage. 

I really enjoyed my day at Seedcamp, and will be keeping an eye on some of the more exciting ventures over the next year. 

Nicky

…the perennial question! We get asked this all the time and it’s difficult to say with any conviction as we’re a young business and the summer is traditionally a bit quieter in PR. However the number of briefs we’re looking at and the scope of some of the work would perhaps indicate that clients are regaining their confidence about putting their hands in their pockets. It would help if certain influential business and management press could lay off the gloom and doom headlines of course. We’re all a bit bored of them now!

We’re interested to hear what others think about the market prospects particularly as we move into September which is usually a busy time in the sales cycle.