What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 23 September 2013

Welcome to another week and the Freshtival is finally here.....

We kick off on Wednesday which is very much a PR orientated day with some truly great guest lectures scheduled throughout and also a hopefully humorous talk by our very own Paula Kelsey on the History of the Fresh PR Awards, which includes all sorts of gossip and a few stories too....

Paula founded Fresh back in 2003 and although the Fresh PR Awards were not introduced until 2006, she plans to share the journey and examine some of the trials and tribulations that we’ve experienced in competing with major publishers, industry bodies and a highly cynical industry.

Despite the many challenges, we like to think that we have turned Fresh into a respected Awards brand, one with a little edge against its rivals and a programme that is now attracting the attention of some serious consultancies from the length and breadth of the UK – and if we allowed them – from abroad.

Paula also plans to share some of my own personal favourite winning campaigns from

previous Fresh PR Awards, a few salacious stories and some of the more stupid questions we’ve encountered in running the awards.

We’re fairly fortunate at Fresh to have worked with some great people and industry bodies and have a little of an inside track on the thoughts of some of the best thought leaders in the business.

Some will argue that the business needs to embrace change and some will state that whilst change is a good thing, the industry needs to more to safeguard its best practice status from the social media starlets and wannabees that claim to be able to deliver PR simply through adding a few tweets to an existing campaign.

Of course social media is a fantastic marketing tool and we acknowledge that we need to do it better, be more proactive and engage more here at Fresh. But we like to think we learn and wherever possible adopt the tactics of some of the best Social Media Stars around.

We have the utmost admiration for those that can deliver truly memorable campaigns on a shoestring and anyone that can vouch for a campaign that they’ve seen or been exposed too (and we are not talking Jimmy Saville here!)

Fresh PR is not ready to go global yet, and yes we do get at least half a dozen enquiries each year about overseas entries, but if we did accept International Entries, we hope that both our entrants from the UK and Abroad would aspire to deliver projects of the calibre of one of the most talked about integrated campaigns this year: The three-minute short co-produced by Melbourne private rail service Metro Trains to teach people to be careful around trains, 'Dumb Ways to Die', has notched up more than 50 million views on YouTube since its release in November 2012, sparked hundreds of parodies and even become a smartphone game.

The fantastic Matt Neale first bought this campaign to our attention during the PRCA Dare Roadshows, and we are still talking about it now, so it goes to show just how memorable it has been! 

After all of the speaker events, it will then be time to celebrate at the Fresh PR Awards at the Imperial War Museum North, and to see just who has been successful and which campaigns we will still be talking about in the coming months.

To end this week, we'd like to remind you that the Brand You Awards are next Tuesday in Bristol and if you haven't got your ticket sorted yet, you had better shout as the event is now sold out!

Have a great week and we hope to see you at the Freshtival!