Brands2Life

Who’s in the hot seat?

Co-Founders Giles Fraser and Sarah Scales with the support of a very strong management team.

Sum up your agency’s 2010 in less than 140 characters

From Idea to IMPACT – the agency clients hired for outstanding insights, creativity, innovation and results that impacted directly on their bottom line

Name your three best technology clients or account wins

Cognizant – we’ve been working closely with this high-growth IT services market leader for several years and are enjoying helping them drive their business forward

match.com – we handle consumer and corporate PR for this market-leader. Internet dating is a subject everyone has a view on and we’re having great fun helping them lead the discussion

Gemalto – we got hired to create a global social media strategy for this digital security giant. The opportunity to explore how their marketplace is evolving online and help create and execute a strategy is one that we have greatly appreciated

What was the most exciting technology PR campaign you ran in 2010?

VMware Smart Savings encompassed many of the skills we think makes Brands2Life special as an agency. We used the UK Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) as a hook to show local government in the UK how much they could save by virtualising their IT systems (£3.6bn). By being fast and bold, our research ensured VMware beat all the other commentators to the punch and put the VMware message into the business pages of the national papers. Our in-house team created a campaign micro-site that ensures that VMware sales teams, customers and partners got all the information they needed about the campaign and the proposed solutions as the campaign broke.

What was the best piece of technology PR work NOT done by you in 2010

The launch of the iPad. No-one knew what people would use it for before it was launched but it seems a lot of people around the world have worked that out pretty fast!

Significant technology hires in 2010

Many of our best hires in the past year have been some of the graduates we’ve trained up. We also continued to invest in the specialist skills we need to deliver multi-channel communications campaigns. We’ve got over 75 people now including broadcast, public affairs, social media, SEO/SEM, video, and web specialists.

Highlight of 2010

We were delighted to move into our new offices in Victoria above the Telegraph in October. We’ve always pushed an integrated, cross-discipline model and now we have the space that enables our teams to spread out and collaborate properly.

Many of the campaigns we ran demonstrated why our integrated approach makes the difference. Our integrated, cross-discipline model helps us to design innovative campaigns that both enhance the brand and deliver one message across all channels. Several of the clients we won cited our hybrid approach as the reason they appointed us.

What do you think will be the key trends for technology PR in 2011

• The silos within marketing and communications departments are breaking down which creates a massive opportunity for PR to take the news-driven campaigns they develop and extend their reach across all audiences
• Clients will look for agencies that can successfully demonstrate a hybrid model that combines traditional PR skills with digital and social media expertise to build and protect their brand and drive profitable customer relationships
• It’s now possible to create campaigns that drive marketing leads and customer enquiries as well as brand awareness. Clients are going to be demanding all of this from their agencies in the year ahead.
• PR professionals are going to need to become knowledgeable on how to create content and campaigns that work as well on portable and mobile devices as on the web and in print.

Plans for 2011

Over the last two years we have been formulating our strategic approach to campaign planning – From Idea to IMPACT. Now we seeing many of our clients and prospects benefit from that approach. In today’s world campaigns succeed because they have a great idea that differentiates the client at their heart. Once that has been formulated then the challenge is to implement that idea across all channels and communicate it to all audiences. That’s what we’ve been focussing on this year.