Amy comes to us with a diverse set of multi-sector communications experience, gathered over eight years in the industry with a number of leading London Agencies, on top-level accounts with brands including Andrex, Yahoo! Disney, Virgin Holidays and American Express.

Joining our Bristol operation from MHP Communications, where she was an Associate Director on the brand team, playing a central role in large scale engagement programmes for American Express including ‘Be inspired’ with Kevin Spacey. Amy was notably instrumental in managing the evolution of a brand icon for Andrex.

Having spent time in the past working as a medical hospital volunteer on the African continent, Amy operates with a level sense of perspective and an innate understanding of people, which complements our focus on developing talent in the agency.

And with her specialism in bringing strategic insight into creative campaign development, she brings impressive analytical skills that mesh perfectly with our wider focus on aligning Bray Leino’s goals with those of our clients.

Rod Dennis is an Account Director with weighty experience in the planning and delivery of national media relations and community engagement campaigns, and joins the B2B and Corporate PR team from Grayling.

He’s managed and implemented impactful communications campaigns for Frazer-Nash, one of the UK’s leading engineering consultancies, the National Grid, the government businesses advice programme Envirowise, education initiative Aimhiger, and renewable energy consultancy Offshore Marine Management.

Rod has already been instrumental in providing consultancy to the B2B and Corporate PR team’s global and national client base. He’ll provide valued consultancy on digital content strategy, crisis communications support and delivery; and new business growth support for our ambitious team.

Out of hours, Rod is a coffee connoisseur and will be bringing the same passion for technical detail to his writing and consultancy delivery within the B2B and Corporate PR team.

Okay, not really, but we have been working with infamous lookalike photographer Alison Jackson to create an image of Kate Middleton’s potential baby shower, to honour the launch of Shloer’s new limited edition Raspberry & Rhubarb Punch flavour. This also forms part of a creative campaign to drive association of Shloer as the perfect drink for mums-to-be.

The creative platform has provided a springboard for the Shloer brand to gain cut through and share of voice in the national news – taking the brand beyond its usual product review-led media space in the women’s weeklies and building brand equity.

Following a fabulous day at a very regal home in central London, with lots of hair and make up, posh props and the bonus of making friends with a very playful Corgi called Rufus, the team created a media strategy that maximised the natural news opportunity around Kate and Wills second wedding anniversary. The team took the strategic decision to issue the ‘sneak peek’ images to coincide with this milestone event and maximise coverage potential.

A Sunday sell in secured large-scale mainstream coverage with the Daily Star and Daily Express, New, Now, the Mail Online, Huffington Post, MSN, Stylist, Closer, NOW!, Look and Digital Spy among others. The images were proactively shared on Twitter and Facebook, with over 300million opportunities to see across traditional media and social channels.

To see more exclusive snaps of Bray Leino’s Alison Jackson’s baby shower shoot for Shloer, head over to www.facebook.com/shloer and check out our campaign making it onto PR Examples.

Sea Bass are a notoriously rude and insensitive fish.

We wrote and produced the spot for the leading independent pharmaceutical company Thornton & Ross, which owns the WindSetlers brand.

WindSetlers is an over the counter remedy for trapped-wind, so our creative team knew they had an interesting job on their hands; digesting the innate embarrassment and humour around the issue to produce one of our favourite pieces of creative work of the year so far.

It’s the first TV activity Thornton & Ross has undertaken with WindSetlers since 2009, and the ad, the first of two to be aired this year, represents a significant creative change in its traditional approach to the brand.

“The creative concept Bray Leino have come up with effectively delivers our brand message from an entertaining and original new angle,” said Hayley Redfern, Brand Manager at Thornton & Ross. “This is an interesting change of direction for us, and one we believe will resonate with our audience in a way that few other brands are currently achieving in this space.”

It would’ve been a crime not to latch on to the humorous nature of this project. “You look like his mum in that dress,” yells the fish from its plate, right in the middle of the restaurant.

“Food making you feel a little uncomfortable?” asks the voiceover as the horrified object of his criticism sits dumbfounded. “Get some relief with WindSetlers.”

This work is our latest in a series of inventive and original campaigns, and continues to demonstrate Bray Leino’s creative muscle. The next ad will air later in the year.

“These new spots are a creative step-change for our client Thornton & Ross, and further evidence of the creative renaissance at Bray Leino,” said Jon Elsom, Bray Leino’s Executive Creative Director. “The funny, crafted, well-observed scenarios strike a chord and keep repeating on you.”

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with living for the moment, but for financial services firms offering solutions for the future, how do they get consumers to pause, think ahead and prepare for what comes next, when all they’re interested in is life in the fast lane?

Although I am in my early (cough cough) 30s, I unexpectedly faced the need to review my own estate planning this year. When chatting to my circle of friends, who are all roughly the same age, homeowners, some with children, I rapidly realised that none of us had even considered making a Will, explored savings options, or had even spoken to a professional advisor in either a legal or financial capacity.

The fact that I have even made reference to my age here is telling in that those under 45 have no connection with the need to prioritise estate planning whatsoever.

It is estimated that two thirds of UK adults do not have a Will. If you’re as engrossed as I am with BBC’s Heir Hunters, you’ll know that this means that when someone dies without a Will, it is the state that decides where that money goes.

Could the crux of the matter ultimately boil down to the use of the word “wealth”? People with a home and moderate savings just don’t consider themselves “wealthy”, so how do financial services providers tackle the somewhat sensitive subject of planning for the future, effectively among my age group, and most importantly for my life stage?

Online research on “estate planning” brings up a vast amount of advice sites, with the messaging telling users to “start planning early”, “contact us immediately” and “it’s never too soon to think about preserving your estate for the future”, but do these messages resonate with me?

No, because they don’t mean anything to me right now. They aren’t statements that apply to my income and savings agenda.

Having now been through the planning process, of course it makes sense to start immediately, it’s a bit like the feeling of admitting your parents were right about something all along; but if the majority of my peers aren’t practicing “good housekeeping” by even having a Will, is there a job that financial services providers can do to help signpost us in the right direction? Could they be making the benefits or importantly the consequences more real for people, or would they be hitting their head against a brick wall?

Well, there is a cultural change ahead of us. From September 2014, the Government will add money matters to the education curriculum within schools. For future generations, ensuring that savings and investments are front of mind, and that any myth-busting is done at an early age, will give young people a rounded knowledge and heightened awareness of the importance of financial issues. But this is about The Facebook Generation – so what about young adults now?

A recent trends study by the Future Foundation suggests that it is the 16-44 age groups who are most focused on price comparison, seeking to end inefficiency and take control of future finances, but it is the 35-44 year old demographic who are most dedicated to shopping around to get the best deals. Both these demographics are game for a bargain, wherever they can get one, so how do we frame the financial planning argument in a way that will resonate?

Evidently, powered by the tenacity to shop smarter, there is an apparent opportunity for financial services providers to target people of this age. Not to preach about planning for the future, but to help consumers see why they should. What does it all mean for me? Why should I sit up and listen right now in my life?

How would I feel right now if, tomorrow morning, everything I’d worked for my whole life was left in the hands of the State? That would mean my house, my car, savings, perhaps an ISA, the Premium Bonds I inherited from a relative, everything…

Now, when you put it like that, people are suddenly able to engage with the message.

So fundamentally, the key point from a communications perspective is, are you, as a consumer, willing to hand over everything you have worked for, and are working for, right now?

Without a Will, without a plan, this future could become a very real prospect.

Your people are your biggest asset in this regard. At Bray Leino, part of our agency business plan includes a specific ‘People First’ work stream. One of the key objectives of this is to commit to the continuing improvement of knowledge, learning and sharing amongst all staff, particularly among the digital team.

This philosophy has a direct influence on our digital business and innovation. To stay in touch with technological innovation, it’s important to keep up to date with the recognised players and newcomers who are driving change.

We support team members attending the key global digital industry events and conferences around the world; CES in Las Vegas, South by South West in Austin, Texas, the Guardian Changing Media Summit in London and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, amongst many others.

Bray Leino is also an active part of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and regularly provides support for digital events. For instance, this year we have supported Ed Vaizey MP and the IPA in the Creative Pioneers Challenge to find the brightest young digital talent and best creative entrepreneurs. We have taken nine highly promising new staff into the business as part of this scheme.

Our recruitment process for digital staff is weighted toward assessing a candidate’s attitude toward creativity, innovation and technology – we look to hire people who have a natural curiosity and enthusiasm for digital.

Knowledge sharing around the organisation is achieved very simply via internal email and collaboration tools like Yammer, making the process of disseminating new discoveries, new research and technology launch information very simple and effective.

New technologies are assessed via a nimble yet rigorous qualification and testing programme, with an in-house testing and QA manager responsible for highlighting crucial functional or security risks.

Digital analytics then comes in to play heavily, as tracking and measurement capabilities are set up to monitor pre-defined performance-based measurements, which deliver insights that help us manage strategy and decision making on an on-going basis. Tools typically employed include, amongst others, Google webmaster tools, ClickTale tracking, Meltwater Buzz social media tracking and Google Analytics.

For us as a digital business, and for any business that needs to stay balanced on the cutting edge of digital innovation, knowledge-sharing and keeping everybody firmly grounded on the shifting digital landscape is critical to our work. This, combined with robust analysis and data-driven, insight-based decision-making, forms a key part of our business DNA.

But more choice doesn’t necessarily make a marketer’s job easier, and each channel carries subtly different nuances and perceptions in the mind of the user. So how do you ensure the channels you choose are the right ones?

One of the inherent aspects of digital, a characteristic that makes it such a bright candle to the ROI moths of marketing, is our ability to make it highly measurable. We can respond instantly to user feedback, monitor behavioural changes and track developments in technology very easily.

Planning your channel strategy is an analytical process that requires knowledge of your brand objectives and a deep understanding of your audience. At Bray Leino, campaign objectives, measurement criteria and audience information form the bedrock of our digital delivery planning.

The process starts with establishing, prioritising and agreeing clear business and campaign objectives. What do we need to achieve? What are we trying to change? We need to ask who our core audience is; where are they, both in the real and digital worlds, and what are their passions and motivations?

If this insight isn’t available, there’s some research to do to ascertain these facts. Because without this deep audience understanding, you could be shooting off blind into the digital darkness; an audit can quickly establish user segments and provide insight into their needs and motivations. And it’s good marketing practice to have this data available, regardless of the channels you’re investigating.

The next important question is, ‘what do we want our audience to actually do?’ Are we looking for users to register to a service, a content stream or website? Do we need them to transact, vote or otherwise engage with the brand? What’s our call to action?

The last step in the planning process is to define the specific metrics we need to track and agree how they’ll be applied to measure our success. All this planning may sound trivial, or pedantic, but gaining this clarity and agreement on objectives, users and metrics of success should allow you to make informed choices on your channel strategy.

At Bray Leino, we also take it a step further. Our digital experts take these agreed criteria and match them against a matrix of digital delivery channels that indicates the influence and effect of each, allowing us to propose firm channel recommendations against the objectives, taking into account budget and time constraints, and justify an approach for the pre-agreed audience segments and scenarios.

Other factors that should come into play include the data and insight you can draw from existing website statistics, website conversion data, Google search data, existing user databases and a detailed social media audit; all feeding in to your new, highly informed and eminently justifiable decision-making process on digital channel strategy.

The Five Step Process

• Establish, prioritise and agree clear business and campaign objectives
• Establish and agree the various user profiles, user scenarios and goals
• Define how success will be demonstrated, what specific metrics will be measured?
• Assess all this information against the available digital delivery channels
• Interrogate various data sources (e.g. traffic data, conversion data, Google search data, existing user databases, social media audit etc.)

The landscape today is nowhere near as simple. Fragmentation of the traditional channel mix and the divergence of digital, has placed the consumer in control of where, when and what the brand conversation entails.

Customer Relationship Management has become the Customer Managed Relationship, meaning traditional Direct Marketing tools and techniques need to be adjusted to deliver ROI.

A detailed understanding of the paths to purchase requires a whole new set of skills; skills that Bray Leino is perfectly placed to deliver.

We call our approach “Unlimited CRM”, meaning that our unique suite of tools, built up over a number of years, enables us to analyse and understand the modern customer journey in detail, generating clear strategies that help consumers, using push and pull communications, along the journey.  It means the solutions can vary to tried and tested Direct Marketing techniques to more integrated ones.

Segmentation: That process might include a detailed segmentation strategy, similar to the work we undertook for The Royal Mint. Using a mixture of transactional and lifestyle data to generate a deep view of their audience, identifying key customer segments, enabling us to recognise the most valuable customers and tailor messaging appropriately to each group.  We created more value and less waste and generated a new group of collectors.

Complex tracking and measurement: Where an audience is large and varied, the process will require a strategy to motivate many complex customer segments. For instance, during our work on the 2011 Census campaign, we employed large scale tracking and measurement techniques that allowed us to generate real-time performance feedback. We then up-weighted and fine-tuned messaging activity in underperforming regions based on that data.

Customer communications: Continual customer prospecting programmes enable brands to follow subtle, data-driven communications strategies based on existing customer information, like our ongoing CRM programme work with Brittany Ferries.  Employing a mixture of eCRM tools and direct mail to drive repeat purchase and increase customer value.

Brand advocacy: Influencers and advocates play an increasingly pivotal role in the customer journey. It’s crucial to understand that social media engagement, reviews and feedback carry increasing weight in the digital sphere. Our work with the skincare brand Freederm required a focused advocacy strategy, using specialist 24/7 social media management to transform brand detractors into advocates and promote positive conversation around the brand.

But these are only a small selection of the techniques we can employ. And the continuing fragmentation of channels means that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Flexibility is critical, that’s why “Unlimited CRM” has to encompass the entire, complex journey.

Our skill-set makes us uniquely qualified to examine the key barriers across the whole process, creating a blend of traditional tools and innovative, reactive techniques, backed up by solid insight through real time data.

Within hours of the news breaking, our creative team had whipped up a mock commemorative JLS special edition Freederm tissue box and released it through the brand’s Twitter and Facebook accounts in a show of support and solidarity with upset teenagers everywhere.

The response was dramatic; generating massive engagement and sharing across the brand’s Facebook and Twitter streams.

In answer to a flurry of questions, exclamations and enquiries about the tissues from impressed JLS fans, Freederm explained that, “they’re for anyone worried that their heart won’t beat again”, a reference to the band’s pop classic hit ‘Beat Again’.

“I’ve just asked for JLS tissues in Superdrug, my daughter told me you did them”, tweeted one disgruntled mother. Sorry @teddycoco, you can’t get them anywhere, yet.

However, the level of interest these fictitious commemorative tissues quickly generated has led some of us to question who the next high profile boy-band split might feature. Answers on a postcard…

“Omg can you get these? In need!” responded one fan. “I’m still so sad I can’t take it! Need these,” said another, while a number of users pointed out that the tissues would make an excellent accessory for fans travelling to see the band’s farewell tour in December.

Stay strong JLS fans, Freederm shares your pain.

With hundreds of applications for just a handful of places, Bray Leino beat off stiff competition from top agencies across the UK.  A fantastic result, appointment to this framework is real recognition of our strategic, creative and multi-discipline delivery capabilities particularly in delivering high impact awareness and behaviour change campaigns.

“Taking complex information and transforming it into compelling multi-channel communication that inspires the engagement of multiple audiences is not only a brilliant opportunity, but part of our very DNA”, explains Chief Strategy Officer Lisa Killbourn.  “Melding sound strategy with stop-you-in-your-tracks creativity to deliver real engagement and behaviour change is both a challenge that we relish and what makes us special.  We can’t wait to find out more.”

Executive Creative Director, Jon Elsom, agrees:  “This is exciting stuff.  Public awareness campaigns provide a great opportunity to produce ground-breaking and truly memorable work and I can’t wait to hear about the challenges ahead.  Our appointment is clear recognition that we’ve built an agency that’s not only a successful business but a highly potent creative and strategic force that can compete at the highest level.”

For more information, please see:

• A selection of some of our previous work with public sector organisations
• The Customer Managed Relationship: Why traditional direct marketing tools are no longer enough
• Digital strategy: How to choose the right digital channels
• Digital marketing: How to stay on top of new technology, the Bray Leino philosophy

Further activity on the Sunday saw our intrepid team hitting Manchester Airport with Coronation Street favourite Katherine Kelly ‘our Becky’ who welcomed in the newly named plane ‘Queen of the Cobbles’ with the lucky lady who named it Ruth Crawshaw.

The first national coverage generating tactic to launch the route was our Glass bottomed plane April Fool spoof which we worked on exclusively with the Daily Mirror, who ran it with tongue firmly in cheek, this was the catalyst for the world to start talking about the stunt. Did you fall for it? One Chinese broadcaster did.

The story has since become the most-viewed article ever on virgin.com with coverage including BBC Breakfast news, ITV, Sky, CNBC, CBS, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun, Yahoo, TechCrunch and Huffington Post as well as tripling Sir Richard Branson’s usual reach on twitter.

Seven days later the team got the nation’s attention again at Edinburgh airport, dressing Richard and his glamorous Little Red cabin crew in specially-commissioned Harris Tweed kilts in Virgin Atlantic colours. After meeting Scottish Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and presenting her with a gift as way of celebration for arrival in Edinburgh, Richard revealed a rather cheeky message to the competition on his boxer shorts!

Again, this created headlines with coverage appearing on STV, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, i, The Independent, The Times, Metro, Daily Record, Scottish Sun and Mail Online to name a few.

Not one to sit still, the team then hot footed it to Aberdeen for more 3d street art activity, with 5 interviews also secured at the airport for Edmond Rose VA’s commercial director when the inaugural flight arrived. This activity led to a 3 fold increase in bookings in Aberdeen that day alone.

Want to check out the new Little Red service for yourself? Fly over to the Virgin Atlantic website.