Author: DTW Agency

It’s an exciting fortnight for all things Northern Spire – our major infrastructure project (a new bridge) in Sunderland. We’ve two very high-profile Royal visitors coming to site next week, and this Thursday sees the city of Sunderland – and our new bridge in particular – play a starring role in a national BBC documentary.

Royal visit on the cards

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will see Sunderland’s striking new Northern Spire bridge for themselves when they visit the project next week, which is hugely exciting for the city and everyone involved. Big credit must go to the Sunderland City Council team for working so well with the Lord Lieutenants office to secure the visit and organise everything along with Kensington Palace.

DTW’s role has been to make sure everything ‘on the ground’ is behaving just as we want it to, and that the site team all know they role on the day. You can’t underestimate the amount of planning and discussion that goes into these things. Fingers crossed.

BBC Sea Cities

It’s never dull this bridge lark. Ahead of next week’s excitement there is an excellent BBC documentary all about the people and landscape of Sunderland being aired nationally on BBC2 this Thursday night.

Sea Cities – Sunderland is being broadcast on BBC2 at 8pm on Thursday, 15 February and we promise you it’s well worth a watch. Not only will you get some great behind the scenes footage of the construction work for Northern Spire, but you will get to see some incredible footage and characters from right across Sunderland.

We’ve been working with the BBC team for the past year – come rain or shine – but mainly rain – to help them capture some of the stunning engineering feats that have taken place during that time, and the drone footage that is used in the bridge sections of the programme was all done by our team.

So, what are the lessons to pass on from having a BBC documentary crew on site on several occasions for the best part of a year. It’s a bit different to a Look North feature. Here’s a few hints from us

1. Be prepared to give extra access – documentaries are dull unless the programme makers can really get behind the scenes and get a feel for the drama and the characters on a project
2. People, people, people – this programme is all about the people. Great characters make great viewing. Characters are real, not scripted (and they’re usually not the boss). In an age when we all want authenticity the best way of doing that is to show the real thing – this programme certainly does that.
3. Tell the team to have fun – smiling and laughing is infectious. We all like watching it. We like joining in. Take the work seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously and you’ll come across well on camera.
4. Know your limits – the media will always have another request (even the BBC). Most of the time, it’s good to say yes, but there are times when you need to say “no, sorry, but that’s not possible”. That’s fine and you should be prepared to do it when it is appropriate. Just remember though that if you keep saying no it was probably a bad idea in the first place.

There’s always more to say but that’s it for now. You can see a little sneak preview on the BBC website right now just to get a taster for the real thing. Make sure you tune in on Thursday night.

Thanks for reading

Chris

Well, that’s a nice way to end the week. DTW was today (9/2/18) shortlisted for five awards for this year’s PR Moment Awards.

The awards were spread across the work we have done for a variety of big clients including the Law Society, the Mersey Gateway Bridge project, the merseyflow brand launch and the Northern Spire bridge project in Sunderland.

On top of that we’ve also been shortlisted for Integrated Agency of the Year, which is great news coming less than two months after we scooped the CIPR North East’s Outstanding Consultancy, in Newcastle.

We’re stoked, especially because these nominations are a great recognition of the work we strive to do day in, day out for our clients.

They also recognise the full breadth of our team’s talents in PR, media and communications, creative design, social media and community engagement.

It’s a huge well done for everyone’s efforts. Now we just have to win them!

In full the nominations are:

1. Social media campaign of the year – Law Society
2. Public Sector `campaign of the Year – Mersey Gateway and merseyflow
3. Media relations campaign of the year – Northern Spire
4. Community Engagement campaign of the year – Northern Spire
5. Integrated Agency of the year

The awards ceremony is set to take place on Thursday, April 26, in Manchester, watch this space for updates.

Happy Friday! What a great way to end the week!

We’ve made a little Christmas animation just for you – you just know you need to brighten up your day by watching it.

We have really enjoyed working with you in 2017 and look forward to catching up with you again in 2018.

Thank you for helping us do what we love – it is through our work with amazing clients and partners like you that DTW has just been named Outstanding Consultancy in the 2017 CIPR PRide awards – we couldn’t have done it without you so it’s a huge thank you from us.

Have a fantastic Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Don’t forget to put the volume up on your machine!

We’re a little bit chuffed so forgive us if that comes across a bit in this post!

DTW won three golds, including Outstanding Consultancy, and two Silver awards at the CIPR North East Pride awards on Friday.

We’d like to thank everyone at every client and every partner we’ve worked with who has contributed in some way to helping us achieve this – we literally couldn’t have done it without you.

As well as Outstanding Consultancy we picked up Gold awards for Social Media for our work with Bolton Council’s 2016 Food Festival and Integrated Campaign for our road safety project for RSGB North East.

The Silver awards were for our work with the Law Society on their Solicitor Brand campaign and Sunderland City Council on Northern Spire (some of you may know it as New Wear Crossing).

You don’t get to do this without a lot of hard work and effort, mixed with a little creative inspiration every now and then so it’s really satisfying to be recognised in this way.

Tonight is the annual CIPR North East Pride awards.

I’m rather pleased that our team has been shortlisted for ten awards. It’s been a busy, challenging, rewarding and hugely enjoyable year.

Our work on major infrastructure projects like Mersey Gateway and the newly-christened Northern Spire has really been an incredible experience and a privilege for all involved to see some incredible engineering and get involved in projects that change lives and shape communities.

Alongside that we’ve been working some with very clever clients and partners to deliver some great campaigns.

Paul Holmes from The Holmes Report (a man much cleverer than me on these things) said last year that ““The pace of change in public relations has never been faster than it is today, but at the same time, it will likely never be this slow again.”

How right he was, and how terrifying and exciting that concept is. The world is changing and the way we communicate is changing even faster.

Our challenge is to keep up – so if you’re in the industry standing still is not an option. Make sure you read the latest blogs from Wadds and others, get signed up to the CIPR and become part of a truly professional PR community, and never stop learning.

Awards are great, and I hope we win something tonight because the team deserves it, because you only get them through hard work and inspiration.

Well done to everyone who is shortlisted and good luck for this evening.

Thanks for reading

Chris

Every year we do a client survey to get feedback on how we’re doing. Obviously we’re in regular contact with clients all year round but the annual survey is an important touchstone for us to make sure that all our key client contacts have the opportunity to sit back and tell us what they think.

Some of the numbers are below, and they’re great, but it’s the informal feedback, testimony and little golden nuggets of suggestions for improvements that can be really valuable.

Being honest and sharing results (good or bad) and giving people feedback where they’ve taken the time to contribute is really important too. Miss that bit out and your credibility starts to suffer.

Authenticity is the comms buzzword of 2017 but the thing about authenticity is it has to apply in word and deed – it’s no good having an incredible website full of promises if the client’s experience doesn’t match up to it.

Thanks for reading.

Chris.

It was a quiet night at the UK Public Sector Communications Awards last week.

Nothing to talk about at all except we only went and won the award for Best Use of Media Relations for our work on the New Wear Crossing with Sunderland City Council!

Really good night and hugely valuable conference in the afternoon. Our award was the icing on the cake and we were quite pleased as you can tell.

It was also great to see so many other great public sector communicators rewarded for their efforts, and a special mention has to go to the team at Greater Manchester Police for their phenomenal comms work in the wake of the Manchester Arena terrorist attack – worthy winners is something of an understatement.

Great company to be in, a real reward for the effort and creativity the team has shown on the New Wear Crossing Project over the past two years and lot of valuable learning.

Thanks for reading

Chris