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HOWAY 5-O!

O Communications celebrates its fifth birthday this month. From its baby steps, we've survived the toddler years and are up and running with great big strides!

Looking back over the last five years we have delivered some fantastic PR campaigns for a wide range of business and consumer clients all over the UK, and picked up a few awards along the way.

We've enjoyed this last year as the CIPR's "Outstanding Agency" 2009/10, pushing our capabilities further with the expansion of our content division embedding video and podcast alongside our brand communications expertise.

Big shout out to the outstanding O team, who are all great fun to work with. And to our clients, without them we would not be here and with whom we are proud to be friends and partners.

Thanks to the UK media (our number one client) and to all the friends who've helped us along the way.

End of Oscars speech....

Howay the lads, PR is alive and kicking in Newcastle!

WORLD CUP IN A WAREHOUSE

On a sunny afternoon in the buzzing creative hub that is Hoults Yard Byker, O Communications joined forces with Muckle LLP and UBS to distract the business community from their day jobs and engage in a spot of 'networking'. Thanks to a 16ft screen, a hog roast and the Baghdaddies for entertainment the event quickly became the hot ticket in town with over 400 people attending.

Not one to forget our friends in the media, the region's newsrooms must have been eerily empty as everyone from news reporters and magazine editors, to picture desk snappers and national correspondents came out for a spot of sun - and an England goal to boot. The relaxed event even saw guests vox-popped by the BBC Look North TV crews and Brian Moore and the Metro FM team broadcasting live from the event all afternoon.

Press coverage started with the evening TV news bulletins and ran for days in the region's print titles. Connections were made, everyone forgot about their worries and possibly even a bit of business was done.

The only question now is what is the next event we can lay on to beat that! Watch this space...

STUDENTS TURN UP THE HEAT WITH PR AWARD

AS part of our commitment to nurturing young talent, we awarded a group of Tyneside students for their ingenious use of PR and marketing within their own Young Enterprise company last night.

O Communications has been a supporter of Young Enterprise North East for the past five years, and we created our own award category for this year’s annual Regional Final event, where students who have set up their own company battle it out to be named Company of the Year.

O Communications chief executive Kari Owers presented the PR and Marketing Award to Cookii Doh- a company set up by a group of year 10 students from John Spence Community High School in North Shields, which designs and produces t-shirts and hoodies with bespoke graphics for teenagers.

As a result of its marketing activity, Cookii Doh is already in talks with Cramlington-based men’s clothing company The Officers Club and is exploring possibilities with high street clothes retailer Next plc and play.com.

As part of their prize we will host a PR master-class for all the school’s Young Enterprise Company Programme students in the new academic year.

O Communications chief executive Kari Owers said: “The Cookii Doh team impressed me from the moment I approached their trade stand.

“Good PR is about being able to sell your idea in the first 30 seconds and they did just that – their branding, presentation, press coverage, advertising campaign, promotional ideas - such as selling hoodies to raise funds for the Haiti disaster - and their evident passion for the marketing of their business was infectious.

“The standard of their creative thought process was knockout for such young people, they had left no stone unturned in marketing their company to their target audiences, attracting partnerships and squeezing every last drop of knowledge out of the Young Enterprise experience.”

The YENE Company of the Year Award went to BrightLife Books, a company set up by year 12 students from Newcastle Church High School, after producing two paperback books, 'Ronnie the Runner bean' and 'Sunny the Sunflower' with a global environment and healthy eating theme aimed at children aged three - 11.

The books come with sunflower seeds so children can grow their own plants and a ‘Wheel of Good Health’ placemat to teach children about eating healthily.

BrightLife Books will now represent the North East at the National Final in London this July.

The other two finalist companies that were judged on the day include, Smarty Pants, a company set up by students from Teesside High School, that produces quality audio CD revision guides and online resources for the GCSE science market, and Munchkins, launched by a group of year 12 business and textile students from The English Martyrs School & Sixth Form College in Hartlepool, who produce personalised aprons and recipe books for children.

EVEN THE STIG LOVES THE 'O'

O Team Gemma and Chrissie do the 'O' with The Stig

Last night, we launched the new BMW 5 Series at Newcastle’s Fawdington dealership by transforming the show room into a glitzy and glamorous venue.

We saw some fantastic catwalk fashion by Fenwick, sampled some amazing cocktails and enjoyed an unbelievable taste sensation thanks to the canapés by Terry Laybourne (who was actually hands on, in his whites behind the scenes!).

After dancing away to the soulful sound of The Crosby Brothers’ band, we got very competitive on the Top Gear style simulators.

Even the Stig turned up to mingle with the guests and of course, we got snapped with him ‘loving the O’!

Hosted by Kim Inglis, the charity auction and generosity of guests raised almost £4000 for the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation – a cause that is close to many of our hearts. We were fortunate enough to welcome Sir Bobby’s son, Andrew Robson, on stage who said a few words about working full time with the charity in place of his late Father.

The generous donations for the auction came from sponsors including M Steel Cycles, Cafe 21, Richard Sinton’s Jewellers, Jesmond Dene House, Close House, Fenwick, Bodyguards and, of course, Fawdington BMW.

The evening was a great success and it just goes to show that with a little creativity and hard work you can convert a busy car show room into a top class event.

O COMMUNICATIONS BUILDS ON SUCCESS WITH HOUSEBUILDER WIN

A still from Miller Homes current TV campaign.

NEWCASTLE creative agency O Communications is building on its success at the recent CIPR Awards by announcing this week it has won the Miller Homes PR account in the North East.

O Communications was named the region’s Outstanding Consultancy of the Year at the CIPR Awards in November 2009.

Now Scotland-based national housebuilder Miller Homes has appointed the creative agency after a three-way pitch to handle all its press and PR activity across the North East region, where it currently has nine developments from Tees Valley up to Northumberland.

Miller Homes’ regional sales director for the North East, Debbie Dunthorne, said: “We were looking for a PR partner that could work alongside Miller Homes as we enter an exciting new phase as the market begins to move forwards, and the team at O Communications not only had many innovative new ideas but have the award-winning track record to deliver the results we are after.”

O Communications is preparing to support Miller Homes’ national PR activity in its 75th anniversary year by focussing on affordable ways to move in 2010 such as the HomeBuy Direct scheme and Miller’s part exchange options.

The win is a significant addition to the agency’s growing property sector portfolio which includes Quorum, the UK’s biggest speculative business park and Space architecture group.

O Communications managing director Kari Owers said: “We are delighted to be appointed by another national client for our on-the-ground media expertise in the region.

“Our creative energy was cited as the deciding factor to join forces, and we are very much looking forward to working with a forward-thinking and innovative company like Miller Homes.”

November marked the beginning of year-long celebrations for Miller Homes as it reaches the milestone of 75 years in business. Still a privately-owned family business since it was first established as James Miller & Partners in the East of Scotland in 1934, it has now built over 75,000 new homes and grown to be a major UK housebuilder. It is a pioneer in affordable, environmentally-friendly housing and won the ‘Best Zero Carbon Initiative’ for its Miller Zero eco-home at the Housebuilding Innovation Awards.

O Communications has an eight-strong team at its converted pottery offices in Ouseburn Valley. It offers all aspects of modern day communications from PR and media relations to social media and video production, events, design and marketing communications.

O is a golden twit!

O Communications has been awarded two gongs at the Golden Twits awards in London, for its use of Twitter.

Commended in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer categories, O Communications was ranked in the glittering awards alongside Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne and TV’s The Meerkat.

The inaugural year for the awards that celebrate the most effective, funny, unusual and informative Tweeters from around the world, the Golden Twits asked Twitter users for their recommendations the their favourite people to follow.

Kari Owers, MD (Twitterer in residence) at O Communications, said: “O has been into Twitter from the very beginning; we make it our business to know what social networks are emerging and use them widely for both ourselves and our clients.

“My Tweets range from what’s going on within the agency, the global media scene, our client campaigns and sometimes my own ramblings....I was quite amazed to find out we’d won at the Golden Twits and my followers have gone through the roof since. Oh the pressure to be even more interesting now...!”

Other winners at the Golden Twits included The Carphone Warehouse, Miller Homes, Channel4Homes, KeepBritainTidy and Amnesty International.

Follow Kari on www.twitter.com/ocommunications.