News

Celebrating three years!

Today, we are celebrating three years in business. Thank you to all our new, existing and former clients who have been with us on our journey – we couldn’t have done it without you!

Delivering PR, Marketing and Communications services nationally!

What’s your favourite sandwich?

That was the random question we asked colleagues during a recent video shoot for our client Durham Tees Valley CRC.

The purpose of the video was to promote and raise awareness of the different projects each team or department were working on. A member of staff from each team volunteered to speak in front of camera and at the end, we decided to chuck in a random question and throw them off guard! So… what’s your favourite sandwich?

The video was shown at the company’s staff conference event and was very well received.

Business videos don’t need to be serious and asking questions like this adds personality and character on screen. As part of our Marketing service, we worked with Sean Conroy (www.seanconroy.co.uk) to help us deliver this project and he did a great job.

So… what’s your favourite sandwich? Ours has to be ham or beef any day!

PRMoment awards 2018 shortlist

Friday brought news we were shortlisted in two categories at this year’s PRMoment North awards.

The awards celebrate excellence and recognise and reward outstanding campaigns and talent in the UK PR and communications sector.

Up North Communications has been shortlisted in the Not-for-Profit campaign of the year category for the PR support we delivered on behalf of the saving Ouseburn Farm campaign. We have also been shortlisted in the Community Engagement campaign of the year category for our work in engaging Byker residents to deliver award-winning publications.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Manchester on 26th April. To see the full shortlist, please visit PRMoment Awards 2018 North Shortlist.

New website launched

We thought it was about time to review our own website and give it a little refresh with new design, layout, functionality and content.

We spend so much time delivering quality services for our clients, we forget at times to stop, take a breather and think about our business. Christmas is a great time to ‘play catch up’ so while all our clients were having a well-deserved rest and recharging their batteries, we used that time to re-design and re-write this new website and we’re really pleased with it – we hope you like it to.

We’ve been working with the guys at Urban River (www.urbanriver.com) to re-design our site and thanks to NBSL (https://nbsl.org.uk/) for providing some support in grant funding to get us going. It’s not the first time we’ve worked with Urban River, we worked with them to re-design and re-launch a new website for one of our clients, Tyne Housing Association. Check it out here – www.tynehousing.org.uk

Get noticed – award success

We are always proud of the work we deliver on behalf of our clients – even more so when we win awards and we have been very fortunate to be recognised in regional and national awards within our sector (PR and marketing).

Now and again, we get asked to pull together award submissions for our clients. Entering awards is an ideal way to raise your profile and shout about your achievements whether they are at a local, regional or national level or specifically within the sector you operate.

It’s around this time of year when we all start receiving emails from event organisers to start thinking about entering their awards. Some will be free to enter whilst others will be expensive but entering awards and raising your profile should all link back to your marketing and communications strategy. If you have delivered a project that you are particularly proud of then why wouldn’t you want to shout about it? If you have a member of staff who goes above and beyond their core duties to deliver an excellent service then why shouldn’t they be recognised and rewarded?

It’s important to plan awards in advance. They can be very time consuming to write and it is important that you fulfil the award criteria and look carefully to see what the judges will be looking for. This is where Up North Communications can help. We have been very successful in entering awards on behalf of our clients. Our role is to help you raise your profile and to write award submissions that make you ‘stand out from the crowd’ i.e. your competitors. The key to writing successful award submissions is to write and present it in a way that will grab the judge’s attention.

This is exactly what our client Tyne Housing Association did. We presented a list of housing-sector based awards and they specifically asked us to enter the Inside Housing UK Housing Awards and in particular, the Outstanding Approach to Communication (under 10,000 homes) category for the work that was delivered on behalf of the association and to Ouseburn Farm.

The awards shortlist was announced on Friday 12th January and Tyne Housing was successfully shortlisted. What a way to start the New Year! They have been successfully shortlisted as one of six finalists. This is great news for our client especially to be recognised in such prestigious awards. Good luck and we’re routing for you in the finals on 2 May 2018!