In the early hours of Wednesday 16th May, 8,000 hand-made clay figures appeared around Manchester’s busiest streets, designed to reflect the rushed, early morning commutes made by those who were most likely to find them.

The public were encouraged to take away the figures for their own enjoyment and share their thoughts, films and photos online. As such, word spread very quickly on twitter of their existence, with many people tweeting pictures and details of their locations, so much so the hashtag #littleclaymen began trending.

The models, designed by artist Lawrence Epps were placed around the city as part of a campaign to promote the Future Everything festival at MOSI, which celebrates the latest developments in art, music and technology. Lawrence had previously created similar campaigns in London and Stoke.

Whilst many had no idea about their existence and merely stumbled across this brilliant campaign, many were actively on the hunt for them, following tweets from MOSI and FutureEverything as to their impending arrival on the streets. The response was incredible, urging workers to use their lunch breaks to scour areas in which they had been spotted, and taking them as desk mascots!

The key objective was to raise awareness of the festival, creating chatter and interest in the build up to the event.

It remains to be seen how successful the campaign was in directly driving footfall. What it has accomplished, however, is successfully allowing the public to interact with the festival, taking it out of the confines of the museum and firing up the imagination of the public.

(Image courtesy of www.sykey.org)

When I applied for a work experience placement at Democracy, I was expecting a fair amount of brew making, photocopying and answering the phones. The last words I expected to hear at 9 o’clock on my second day of the placement were, “Tom, do you want to go on the baboon shoot?”

Of course I did.

On our drive down to Knowsley Safari Park, Hannah explained the brief to me – apparently we were going to get baboons to launch their new summer 2012 pricing strategy.

Standing safely behind an electric fence as the Park’s staff laid out the sawdust and feed, I cast my eyes across the field toward the troop of over 100 baboons. These guys did not look like they were going to cooperate! A couple of hours later – thanks to the cooperation of the keepers, the photographer and the baboons – we had our shot.

Work experience at Democracy turned out to be pretty different, the team made sure that i got a view on what PR is all about, and although i did a fair bit of admin, I also went to meetings, listened in on sell ins and got a birds eye view (no pun intended) on what the jobs about …. and i loved it!

Written by Tom O’Rourke, work experience

If you’re interested in work experience at Democracy contact Hannah Lebon on 0161 881 5941 or email your CV to hannah@democracypr.com.

I watched Kony 2012 over the weekend. The video posted on YouTube by US advocacy group Invisible Children, had been shared by many a friend on my Facebook wall during the past week, telling me to ‘just watch it’, so I did just that.

Fascinating piece of propaganda it is too. If you are not one of the 80 million + who has already viewed the 30 min long film on You Tube, here’s a brief synopsis:

Jason Russell visited Uganda 10 years ago and ever since has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the LRA- a rebel group led by Joseph Kony responsible for the abduction of thousands of children to build his guerrilla army in central Africa. After setting up Invisible Children, Russell’s efforts were eventually acknowledged by the U.S. government who agreed to deploy special forces to support the Ugandan army in efforts to track down Kony so that he can be brought to justice. ‘Kony 2012’ was created in Russell’s own words to “make Kony famous”, citing that as long as people know who Joseph Kony is, the US will continue their military support in central Africa until he is found. The video says it will only be streamed for 2012.

Watching the video you are encouraged to make donations to the cause, buy a trackable bracelet and on April 20^th take part in an activity called ‘Blanket The Night’, in which we will all wake up in the morning to find our cities plastered with images of Kony.

What’s fascinating is how the whole episode is now escalating. Jason Russell has suffered from an incredibly public nervous breakdown in the midst of all the hype/ criticism. Meanwhile, Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi has gone on the PR offensive using the same social media platforms stressing that Kony is no longer in the country, bizarrely tweeting celebs including Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, inviting them to visit.

Regardless of your political view, thoughts about the creator, and opinions on the cause, it’s an extraordinary story to follow and an astonishing demonstration of the power of social media. Jason Russell has literally got the world talking- who could have predicted to what effect?

It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens on April 20^th. I’ll be honest, I’m probably not going to make a donation, nor buy a bracelet, neither will I be getting up at 3am to stick a poster up in Beech Road park. But I am now aware who Kony is. Objective achieved.

The highstreet and retail in general is going through a tough time, with high street stores and online retailers failing quicker than a celebrity marriage.

Retailers are having to work harder in terms of customer service, quality of product and audience engagement, to capture the imagination of the audience that they rely on to survive. Luxury products can’t just sit back and rely on their items, the customer needs to enjoy a unique experience to warrant the expenditure and budget items can’t just be about the price point, the market is saturated and people expect a certain level of design for their dosh.

It isn’t easy to find the next ‘new’ thing on the block for fashion where it comes to retail, but the campaign by relatively unknown shoe brand Miista has taken an existing model – tweet and the price will drop and given it a little tweak.

They are offering a bigger discount dependent on your Klout rating, (we’ll save the debate on the merits of Klout for another time) a clever way to encourage those with the highest influence online to get involved with spreading the word throughout their networks for the cost of a few pairs of shoes. The success of the campaign must have come as a shock to the technical department as the numbers to Miista crashed the site!

Will this approach work for Miista in the long run? Well, only time will tell, but if you’re looking to create noise about your brand, a hardworking, persistent press office combined with an engaging digital campaign is a good place to start.

During my time at Democracy, I’ve hit the phones to book in media visits for many different clients, from food to fashion. This week however, I got the chance to experience them for myself.

Along with the British Liver Trust, we took a trip to London to talk to health journalists about Eisberg alcohol free wine’s upcoming campaign with the charity.

Love Your Liver month is an initiative to encourage people to take two to three days off alcohol a week and to be more aware of their own liver health.

The campaign begins in January, so it was a fantastic opportunity to meet face to face with journalists, and to really engage them with the campaign. They loved our idea of a nationwide bus tour of pop up liver clinics, and even pledged, not without trepidation, to come and have their own livers tested when it hits London!

It was also good to hear the trust talk about the medical side of the initiative, reminding us how important liver health actually is, and how small lifestyle changes now can make the world of difference later on.

We had really great feedback and support for the campaign, and  before we’d even boarded the train back to Manchester, we had an email confirming coverage in the Daily Mail Femail, followed by confirmation with Women’s Own!

More importantly, we have developed relationships with key journalists, which we can work hard to maintain and convert to coverage!

So now I know; that’s what media visits are all about!

Democracy PR is an inventive agency based on Beech Rd, Chorlton, Manchester. We were the first agency outside London to put traditional PR and social media on an equal footing, and our clients choose us because we impress them with our creativity and commitment to delivering results.

Since 2008, our client portfolio has expanded to include webuyanycar.com, Baxters, Jack Daniel’s BBQ Sauces, Halewood International, Scruffs Workwear, Black White Denim and The Rock in Bury.

Our team of ten needs some additional support – and we’re recruiting at all levels. We welcome people with different backgrounds who might want a career change away from advertising, search, design or TV production.

Jennifer O’Grady is our Founder and Managing Director. She is pleased to take full responsibility for the development of your career in PR. Jennifer promises to provide a lively working environment where you will make the best use of your strengths in our rapidly growing agency.

• Jennifer is fully aware of your need to grow as a professional.
• She will commit significant effort to help you enhance your natural PR talents.
• She knows you have the desire, tenacity and commitment to succeed in this exciting industry. It is her goal to provide you with the resources you need to gain the satisfaction of realistic personal and professional development.

To apply, please send a one page CV to jennifer@democracyPR.com. She will contact you to explain what happens next. Jennifer pays careful attention to your wishes in tailoring the role to your skills and aspirations.

With all the hype around Google+ it’s easy to forget the company built its fortune on becoming the world’s most popular search engine.

Google hasn’t.

It has recently rolled out ‘search by image’ functionality and we’re impressed, and thought we’d learn a little bit more by experimenting.

Starting with my own side-on profile I thought I’d see just how many Brad Pitts are returned in the SERPs, not much luck; just 50-something balding men, anyway as an interesting way to test out the new feature I thought I’d try 5 google searches of separation and try to get as far away as possible from the initial image. I’d like to invite you all give it a go and first prize goes to anyone who gets a Bradley Cooper or a Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in their ‘visually similar’ results

The aim is to get as far away as possible from the your original image as possible.

1) Enable search by google image

2) Right click your image on the internet somewhere select ‘search google with this image’

3) Select ‘visually similar images’ and find whichever image you believe is furthest from the original

4) Repeat four more times to get a funny image (if possible)

My best effort using my Team page image led me, via a number of surprising results that are either understandable or utterly unfathomable, to this ‘similar’ image.

Interestingly the results pages tended to display the same results time and time again (I know it’s ‘visually similar’ so you might expect to see this but i’m choosing the extreme cases every time). It appears to be very rudimentary but could prove to be useful if your chasing a copyright free image to use on your website, or simply if you have some time on your hands and fancy a vanity face search!

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ gave us an ‘unofficial’ hint as to what it would be like to work in the glossy fashion mecca that is Vogue, depicting scenes of backstabbing, designer clothes, bitching and beautiful people – Conde Nast may have thought that with the movie done and dusted, the public’s curiosity into the famously cut throat world of fashion had wained…. Then, along came @condeelevator!

The tweets claimed to be accounts of conversations overheard~ in the lift of Vogue’s HQ in New York sent out jus 36 tweets but managed to amass 68,485  followers (to date), all looking for an insight into the everyday life of the ridiculously stylish.

The tweets were hilariously entertaining, and whether they were real (which appears to be the case as they have stopped – before the fashion police could catch them!) or fabricated, in my movie-tinged mind, that is exactly how Vogue US is. “Woman #1 to Woman #2, holding an omelet: “What’s the occasion?” Woman #2: “…huh?” Woman #1: “I would need an occasion to eat that.”

A Conde Nast spokeswoman said in an statement to ABCNews.com ”We have no idea if this is real or made up and don’t know who is behind it but it certainly suggests that many people care a great deal about what happens at Conde Nast.”

Vogue’s reputation has survived untarnished by the 2006 movie, and the 2009 September issue documentary that depicted Anna Wintour as a bit of an ice queen (I love you Anna!), so I hardly think that this twitter insight would do them any harm, but nonetheless, @Condeelevator account has died a twitter death, with the last tweet stating “Girl or Guy #1 [in elevator alone]: This got really crazy. Love my job. Better stop. #sorry”

Hopefully that’s not the end… what I’d do to be a fashionable fly on that  elevator wall!

Junior PR, Public Relations, Account Executive,
Graduate, Account Manager, Social Media, PR jobs

Manchester

Up to £15,000 plus bonus and other benefits

Democracy PR is an inventive agency based in Manchester offering companies the unique combination of traditional public relations and digital marketing services across the North West.

Jennifer O’Grady is our Founder and Managing Director. She is pleased to take full responsibility for the development of your career in PR. Jennifer promises to provide a lively working environment where you will make the best use of your strengths in our rapidly growing agency.

• Jennifer is fully aware of your need to grow as a professional.
• She will commit significant effort to help you enhance your natural PR talents.
• She knows you have the desire, tenacity and commitment to succeed in this exciting industry. It is her goal to provide you with the resources you need to gain the satisfaction of realistic personal and professional development.

Our first PR Apprentice was shortlisted for the North West CIPR Young Outstanding Communicator Award. Read what happened to Charlie in her first year as apprentice here. Or check out what our newest PR Apprentice Fraser had to say after his first day.

To apply, please send a one page CV to J.OGrady@democracyPR.com. She will contact you to explain what happens next. Jennifer pays careful attention to your wishes in tailoring the role to your skills and aspirations.

UPDATE 6 JUNE 2011: We received more than 60 applications for the PR Apprentice role and we’re in the process of interviewing candidates who have been successfully shortlisted. Fingers crossed we’ll be introducing our new PR Apprentice next week!