YOU Agency

Meet Minoesjka

Hey jij, ik ben Minoesjka!

Hi you, I’m Minoesjka! I come from the Netherlands. No, not Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague or any other big city that might come to mind. I come from Tinte a very, very small town that most Dutch people don’t even know about. Now I’m here, in a city even bigger than Amsterdam and Rotterdam combined. And I’m loving it. Up until now it has been scary, exhausting, overwhelming but oh so exciting! It has always been my dream to travel the world, and I’ve always wanted to start with London. Although, I never really knew why.

I guess it’s because there’s so much to do here. Whatever it is you’re looking for, whatever you’re trying to achieve, whatever your dream is, London has it all. And I’m looking for experience. Experience as a young professional and experience as a citizen of the world. Even though I just began here at YOU, I’m certain I’ve found the perfect place to gain the experience I’m looking for. I just knew that from the start.

My first day was a bit scary, but in a good way. Like Charlie who goes to the Chocolate factory for the first time, I was really excited for the unexpected, but a bit wary of the unknown. Everyone was really friendly and helped me out with anything I needed right from the start. I knew straight away that I would be happy here and would gain a lot of experience.

Everyone was so welcoming on my first day. I settled in really quickly and got thrown straight in at the deep end – shadowing in meetings, helping with client research, making press lists and so many other things. I knew I never needed to feel insecure, I didn’t need to pretend I knew everything because as long as you have a can-do attitude; everyone is always willing to help.

And the results are in...

Now that we’ve all had time to digest the latest quarterly figures from RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research), what does YOU think about it all? Well, our Media Director Rupert Bean outlines the key findings from Q3 2018’s report, and provides some thoughts…so listen up (a radio pun…).

TOPLINE FACTS

- 48.6 million adults listen to radio each week – representing 89% of all UK; 65% of all UK adults listen to commercial radio (as opposed to the BBC).

- The number of 15-44-year-olds listening to commercial radio has risen from 17.94m to 18.24m – this, therefore, goes some way to demonstrate that contrary to what some media experts may say, radio is not a medium channel which is on its way out!

- In terms of where we listen to the radio – 70% listen at home, 63% listen in the car (or other modes of transport) and 25% listen at work (or elsewhere).

- 34.4m adults listen to the radio on a digital platform each week (DAB, DTV or via the internet) – which equates to 71% of the population; and in terms of share of listening, digital has increased to 52% - proving that the UK radio listening population is shifting how it consumes audio.

- In terms of how each main radio brand / network has performed nationally, the main facts are:

o   Heart brand – remains the UK’s biggest commercial radio brand, reaching 9.66m listeners (bigger than Radio 1)

o   Capital brand – 8.4m listeners

o   Smooth brand – rose 200,000 from Q2, up to 5.81m listeners (its highest ever reach)

o   Kiss network – 5.75m listeners

o   Absolute network – 4.9m listeners (up 8% year on year)

o   Magic network – 4.05m listeners (up 8% year on year)

NATIONAL BREAKFAST

- Dave Berry has nabbed the top spot in this category, with his Absolute Breakfast show – achieving 2.21m listeners in his first quarter of results since his start at the station (having moved from Capital); potentially he may have poached some listeners from Radio 2 (which has lost 214,000 since last quarter, and over 500,000 since this time last year).

- It will certainly be interesting to see how Zoe Ball’s move to the Radio 2 Breakfast show (and, on that note, how Sara Cox performs on the Drivetime slot) affects listenership figures – watch this space!

- Magic Breakfast with Ronan Keating and Harriet Scott, now a national broadcast (having traditionally been a London only slot), is reaching 1.3m listeners.

LONDON BREAKFAST

- Capital Breakfast is the No.1 show in London at that time, with 928,000 listeners each week (the presenter being Martin Kemp’s son, Ronan…who is of course also the son of one of Wham!’s backing singers – Shirley!!).

LONDON OVERALL

- Looking at the overall listenership on commercial radio in London, we see the stations stack up as below:

o   Capital – 2.07m listeners

o   Kiss – 1.95m

o   Magic – 1.56m

o   Smooth – 936,000 (up from 775,000 a year ago!)

REST OF UK

- Looking at how commercial stations rank when looking at the rest of the UK, there are a few key observations:

o   Classic FM is the UK’s most popular classical music station, with 5.2m listeners every week.

o   Manchester’s newest national station Hits Radio has performed strongly out of the blocks – achieving an audience of 6.43m listeners.

o   Absolute 80s achieved a record listener figure of 1.8m (up 14.7% quarter on quarter and 15% year on year); likewise, Absolute 90s achieved 913,000 listeners, up 11.1% quarter on quarter.

YOU AGENCY OBSERVATIONS

- Global have posted good results, with Capital winning both in London as a whole, and also at London breakfast, with Ronan Kemp; as well as winning the top 3 brands in the UK. It will be interesting to see how they work this to their advantage now that they own almost 35% of the UK outdoor marketplace; how will they work to offer combined audio / OOH campaigns – we can only wait and see…or is that wait and hear?

- As mentioned earlier, how Radio 2’s new line up (Zoe Ball and Sara Cox specifically) in the coming months affect things – will they grab listeners back in their particular time slots?

- Dave Berry has done sterling work on his Absolute Breakfast show nationally – can he sustain this?

- Diving deeper into the age demographics – the fact that 71% of 15-24s and 73% of 25-44s are listening to commercial radio every week, can only be a good thing for the medium. It is by no means a dying medium, and the ways of using radio (or should we call this audio now?) are so multiple, above and beyond the simple spot time, so it’s certainly an exciting time for this media channel.

YOU Agency’s Daisy Parker explains the concept of Nudging and how we can ‘nudge’ consumers to make a purchase and change their subconscious behaviour.

“Don’t underestimate the force” said Darth Vader, especially when ‘the force’ comes in the form of an outrageous $666 Douche Burger. In an amusing tongue-in-cheek marketing tactic to boost sales Franz Aliquo formed the $666 Douche Burger – described as a “f-ing burger filled and topped with rich people s-t” this high-priced menu item increased sales of the second most expensive item due to our bias for middle values. Not wanting to be seen as cheapskates but also not wanted to pay the ridiculous $666 for a burger wrapped in $100 bills people went for the middle value items.

Studying a Behavioural Economics module at university made me aware that I do not make decisions in a void, there are other forces at work whether it be adding an expensive item to drive sales or simply moving products in supermarkets to eye-level. Our ability to have our choices altered based on the context of our surroundings made me interested in Nudge Theory.

Nudging came to prominence in the book Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness by Thaler and Sunstein (2008). It defines nudging as ‘any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentive’.

Nudge Theory has been applied widely to both public and private sectors, from political campaigns to public health initiatives. The former President Barack Obama and former Prime Minister David Cameron have both endorsed the use of ‘nudging’. However, the public naturally dislike nudges because they see them as a threat to autonomy, failing to recognise that nudging is already influencing their choices.

The novelty of Nudging lies in two features;

Firstly, it uses both behavioural economics and social psychology to predict people’s behaviour. Classical Economists believe ‘each of us thinks and chooses unfailingly well’. Whereas Nudge theory acknowledges sometimes our decisions can be irrational and affected by our environment.

Secondly, nudging is used as a ‘way of steering people’s choices in directions that will improve their lives without restricting their freedom’. This ‘steering of choices’ is facilitated through Choice Architecture. Essentially, the way you present the choices to an individual will influence what they choose.

Nudging ‘can be applied to a wide array of problems arising from our behaviour’. A specific example is using nudging to solve problems of child obesity in the healthcare industry. In the School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study III (SNDA-III) it was found that only a quarter of high school students eat fruit at lunchtime. Resulting in at least one third of school children in the US being obese or overweight in 2018. Individuals are drawn to options that promise convenience and so choose fast food because of the association with convenience. By putting healthier food in an accessible place or placing it first in the lunch line, increased healthier food choices by 18.8%. Nudging in the healthcare industry has also proved extremely effective for other areas such as smoking, adherence to medication and treatments.

However, despite the benefits to healthcare and our longevity, critics of nudging believe it to be ‘infantilizing’ and implies people cannot make beneficial decisions for themselves. This wrongly assumes that they must do the behavior they are being nudged towards. But, nudges have escape clauses, if they did not they would be a ‘shove’, and by providing this opt-out it means people are still free to circumvent the nudge. In the school canteen, they still offer unhealthy food on the menu. People can still choose to eat a burger and fries because they have not excluded unhealthy food. Legislations, laws and prohibitions are ‘shoves’ and surely infantilize people more because they are actively limiting the choices available. 

The converse to ‘shoves’ is having no nudging at all and this is inconceivable. Nudges have been influencing people even before Behavioural Insights teams and Nudge. School canteens were still feeding children healthy and unhealthy options and the same biases and heuristics were shaping people’s choices. The only difference with this new intentional nudging is, with people’s best interests at heart, it can counter nudge the brightly packaged, high calorie options. People inherently are less likely to do things that benefit them in the long term like saving money for emergencies, pension plans or eating healthily.

Nudges are ‘low cost solutions that do not require legislation’. Altering the choice architecture of a school canteen is not expensive. It costs nothing to move the fruit in front of the chocolate cake. Whereas, the cost to the UK economy of obesity was approximately £15.8 billion per year in 2007. In the US, the medical care costs for obesity in 2017 was around $190 billion. Comparatively, nudging is cheaper and could potentially be a long-term solution – the more that elementary school children were taste exposed to vegetables, the more they liked them and ate them in the future.

YOU Agency is delighted to announce its sponsorship of the First Time Buyers Reader Awards 2017. As this years’ shortlist was announced last week in The Speakers Room within the Houses of Parliament, Kirk Hoatson, Director at YOU chose to sponsor The Best Urban Regeneration Project category and will present the award at the celebration lunch on April 21st at the London Wardorf Hotel.

YOU Agency has been intrinsically linked with the property sector for a number of years, having had a multitude of clients from Housing Associations through to builders and developers.

Clients of YOU from the Housing Association sector have won many awards in the past and this year Family Mosaic, Peabody and Latimer are all shortlisted in various categories, of which YOU is incredibly proud.

Kirk Hoatson comments, “At YOU we have supported these awards since the beginning and are delighted to see it grow every year. Under Lynda Clark’s stewardship the awards have become an essential way of recognising excellence in a market sector that really matters.”

Working at YOU for nearly a month has been an utterly amazing working experience and a great insight into the world of PR. I’m a recent graduate of The Pittwater House School in Sydney, Australia, and with my uncle’s grand and generous offer for me to join him in the heart of London to gain work experience, I was quick to accept it with open arms. With the excitement of seeing London and being in such a historic city-scape, the masses of learning and new skills I would gain at You Agency wasn’t initially the biggest attraction in the early days of my trip.

However, I was lucky enough to be involved in a wide range of projects whilst working here at You Agency. I was involved in creative brainstorm meetings, speaking to clients, creating press packs and press lists, as well as transcribing meetings and videos, and researching competitors and potential clients. I was lucky enough to have the chance to be one of the representatives of YOU at the 2017 British and International Franchise Exhibition. Leading up to this event I was tasked with sourcing information and writing and formatting the press pack which really gave me a sense of responsibility. During the event I was actively speaking to the exhibitors and given further responsibilities and purpose in completing both exhibitor and visitor questionnaires. This revealed a hands-on side to PR I’ve never seen or experienced before. I walked away from the exhibition with not only a new awareness of the industry but excitingly with a potential new client!  

Anna King, YOU Associate Director, speaks about her presentation at the Rolls-Royce Global Digital Summit

Twice a year Rolls-Royce hosts a one-day digital summit that brings together all the marketing experts from across the global network that make up the wider Digital Marketing Communications team. The aim of the meeting is to discuss how we can work together to help Rolls-Royce be as innovative and forward-thinking with its digital communications as it is with its power systems technology and products.

The day is formed of multiple short sessions including individual presentations or group exercises, focusing on enabling breaking down the geographical barriers and collaborating to achieve great content. Discussions can range from developments and improvements to Rolls-Royce.com (BrandWatch named Rolls-Royce’s website top 3 in all FTSE 100 companies), right the way through to content creation and how a tone of voice can make a big difference to the effectiveness of your content and how it resonates with audiences.

I was given to opportunity to present on briefing an agency: rightfully entitled ‘the art of briefing’. As an agency we are certainly familiar with briefing, but being an expert in it truly is an art and definitely one of the most challenging parts of my day-to-day role. As eloquent as it sounds, it is well-known that ‘shit in’, most likely will mean ‘shit out’ (yes I broke the no swearing rule of the day), and so I took them through the dos and don’ts of briefing – the honest, non-sleep inducing guide!

A brief that outlines a problem or sets out a challenge and the key objectives, but crucially doesn’t focus on execution and answers, will always be the best. As taught in the IPA Foundation Course, the brief is supposed to set the challenge of needing to cross a river and not give the solution of building a bridge. The brief will have a single-minded focus yet not stifle creativity – as the father of advertising, David Ogilvy, so accurately put it ‘give me the freedom of a tight brief’.

As well as this, I spoke about the importance of defining your audience (a great piece of comms can’t talk to everyone); using the brief as a guide in which to judge the creative and give constructive feedback, and always having the decision makers present to sign-off the brief and review the creative work. The team hopefully walked away better informed in briefing best-practice.

So, bleary-eyed, dimmed and thrilled in equal measure we returned this morning from the annual Epica Awards in Amsterdam #EpicaAwards30.  This was a special event for the guys at Epica as they were celebrating their 30th anniversary, and hence laid on a ceremony and party appropriate to the level of celebration required.  For those uninitiated, Epica are unique in the creative awards calendar as the only jury consisting entirely of trade journalists, offering a unique helicopter view of the industry and its players.

We were there to try and secure some silverware (or crystal-ware as it turned out) for our ‘Vote Rump’ campaign for our pals at Gourmet Burger Kitchen.  We were delighted to have been short-listed, so arrived with much anticipation. 

The campaign was hatched by Head of Design Jason Vrakas and our ECD Kat Mitchell, and beautifully crafted and art directed by one of our wonderful designers Conor Murphy. The executions that finally broke free of the agency walls and appeared all around the country in the lead up to the US election built the brand, created then sold (out) the product, and poked fun at a very deserving target - all in one hit.

Accompanied by aforementioned designer and professional Irishman Conor Murphy we saw some beautiful, hilarious, uplifting and horrifyingly stark work from the world’s biggest and best network agencies - being an independent integrated agency of just 40 people in London, it felt good to be at the top table with these guys.  

Ultimately when the mic was dropped, the ceremony over and the celebrating just putting its heavy boots on, we emerged with a Silver Epica in the Food Category. Duking it out with the likes of BBDO, McCanns, Leo Burnett and Adam&EveDDB had been fun, and, well, it’s not for us to say, but we’re pretty damn pleased with how well we did.

A mention must go to the rest of the amazing team who pulled this unmissable campaign together such as our planet-brained planner Bev Mail, laser-focused Associate Director Anna King and tireless Account Manager Roxy Cameron.  We also planned and booked the media, so thanks also for getting us unrelentingly noticed goes out to full-of-beans Media Director Rupert Bean and unflappable Account Manager Harriet Gorman.

Ruby Cumming writes about her work experience assisting at a client event

Last week YOU Agency was busy revving up for the big finale of Britain Has Spirit: a glitzy awards ceremony at the Barbican Centre. All the national finalists in the search for Britain’s best local volunteers would be attending and the national prize winners would be announced by TV personality, Gabby Logan.

‘Crunch-time’ is the only way to describe the days leading up to the event. YOU was determined to run a tight schedule and deliver a smooth-running ceremony. The team decided to get an extra pair of hands to support the event. As a graduate looking for work experience in events and marketing, this was a perfect opportunity for me to get stuck-in and gain valuable experience.

In the days leading up to the event I was responsible for a range of logistical tasks, including sourcing final attendee numbers and verifying all their personal details, creating photography disclaimers and checklists for the day of the event. My approach was to focus on prioritisation, always double-checking the precedence of each task to get crucial jobs ticked off first.

YOU’s working environment was brilliant: fast-paced, efficient and big on teamwork. We had daily action meetings, delegating every detail and sharing progress updates. The organised routine made it easy for me to fit in the team and I was given lots of opportunities to make suggestions and share my ideas.

At the event itself I was responsible for greeting guests and asking them to complete some essential paperwork. I learnt when the queues got long to keep smiling and go at my own pace.

My favourite task had to be taking pictures of Gabby Logan presenting the awards for social media. I can now say that a photo I took was retweeted by Gabby! (#NotSoHumbleBrag)

The event buzz didn’t stop there for the YOU team. On Monday we hit the media, pitching to national and regional journalists, getting coverage for the amazing campaign.

Back in early January, we teamed up with Together Mutual Insurance to launch Britain Has Spirit, a search for the nation’s most deserving community volunteers.

Following research we commissioned on behalf of our clients, Together Mutual Insurance, we discovered that community spirit across the country was on the decline, with nearly half of those surveyed admitting that they never volunteer in their local area. We saw this as an opportunity to work with our clients on a national PR campaign that would reinvigorate Britain’s community spirit and celebrate local heroes. Consequently, it would strengthen their brand’s positioning as a forward thinking insurance provider that puts people before profits. We had the experience of successfully handling their 2014 Better Together initiative – a similar campaign but on a much smaller scale – and wanted to use our expertise to amplify its impact throughout the country.

We proposed Britain Has Spirit; a three-stage campaign spanning across nine months with nominations, regional and national voting in ten separate regions across the UK. The aim was to look for both group and individual heroes, of whom the eventual winners would be awarded a £25,000 donation each to a charity of their choice.

A key factor to securing influential coverage and awareness around the campaign was finding a celebrity to support the initiative. Popular TV presenter, Gabby Logan, agreed to join the campaign pre-launch and was a vital figure-head throughout the early stages. We also organised for her to host the glitzy National Awards Ceremony towards the end of the campaign where we announced the national winners and presented them with their £25,000 prize.

Social media was another important influencer in this campaign – creating buzz around the voting stages, driving traffic to the website and promoting the initiative as a whole. Our integrated approach at YOU meant it was natural for PR and Social teams to collaborate on the project and this was a fundamental part of its success.

As well as achieving fantastic print and broadcast coverage for our clients on a local, national and even international level, we also helped the 20 regional winners (ten individuals and ten groups) and two national winners raise awareness of the amazing work their volunteers do to support local communities. Across the campaign in its entirety, the response from the public has been phenomenal with over 300,000 votes, 640,000 impressions on social media and more than 3,000 mentions of the phrase ‘Britain Has Spirit’ on Twitter. Britain Has Spirit has brought people together, uniting them through their shared support of a local cause, and showing that community spirit can be revived. The difference these winners can make with their prize money is potentially life-changing and we are very proud to have made this campaign a reality.

When The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates its 70th birthday and asks our media division to fill the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate, it would be churlish not to join in the fun!

That’s what happened on Monday night when we were offered a box to entertain a few agency friends. The evening started with food and drink at one of the RAH's main hostelries before continuing in the YOU box...the concert started with God Save The Queen (at which point the audience looked our way ....but to the box below us); of course we still acknowledged the crowd and overall it really was a special evening.

8th September, 2016: London --- YOU attended the inaugural National Housing Awards 2016 to support our clients Hyde New Homes, Nu Living and Peabody, all of whom were nominated for awards.

The National Housing Awards celebrate the best in the housing development industry, offering awards in everything from Best Design to Best Supplier to the Sector. The awards recognise the ingenuity, creativity, passion and results of housing organisations across the UK.

YOU created each and every award entry ensuring they showcased the amazing work that all three clients have achieved.

Each of our clients were nominated for awards and ended up taking home the prizes throughout the course of the night.

Hyde New Homes won Best Large Development for their Spring at Stonebridge Park development and were also commended in the Best Regeneration Category.

Nu Living were awarded Best Scheme in planning.

Peabody won the Best Marketing Scheme award and were commended for their Pembury Circus development.

YOU Director, Gary Grant comments: “YOU are thrilled for all of our clients as their success shows the impact of a lot of hard work and dedication. All three were deserved winners who are constantly looking for new ways to improve their services and delivering quality developments for many to enjoy. The National Housing Awards are a fantastic way to not only recognise the great work of our clients, but to share innovation and maintain the creativity of the industry.”

After days of hard work and preparation for the Toople.com pitch, YOU was chosen to manage all of Toople.com’s media and PR with one 360-degree approach.

Toople.com is a UK telecoms provider, specialising in business broadband, mobile and telephony services. Having launched this year the company already floated on the London Stock Exchange in May. As such a significant amount of the £2million budget will go towards marketing investment and brand establishment.

The telecoms disruptor is targeting a niche market that is currently underserviced by the big four broadband providers. Focussing solely on SME’s with sub-50 employees, Toople.com offer a personalised business telecoms package with excellent customer service. Headed up by ex-TalkTalk Business Director, Andrew Hollingworth, the company promise to bring expert knowledge in telecoms, and a fresh perspective to a busy UK telecoms market. 

Our 360-degree integrated proposal includes all elements from media buying, digital, social and PR. YOU will focus on raising Toople.com’s brand awareness and dispelling the myths around business telecoms, offering full transparency to UK SMEs on speed, latency, pricing and capacity.

We asked our Managing Director, Gary Grant, who will head up the account with a dedicated team of experts to say a few words about our new win: “This is a great opportunity to help a disruptor with a strong technology backing go up against the behemoths in the UK telecoms market. YOU will be providing a completely integrated solution, which we believe is the future of communications. By boosting our digital solution with PR we are giving Toople.com an unfair advantage against its competitors, with brand awareness across all communication channels.”

“For YOU, a strong client relationship is an absolute must and we will be working as an extension of Toople.com to ensure that SMEs get the transparency around telecoms that they need in this crowded and noisy marketplace.”

Farnborough Airshow is a week-long, world-renowned event welcoming aviation trade visitors from around the globe to do business deals and hear the latest industry news. Over the weekend, the show is then opened up to crowds of spectators eager to watch the powerful fighter jets perform gravity-defying aerobatics. Whether you’re an AvGeek (Aviation Geek) or not, there is a distinct hype and sense of excitement around the show. Rolls-Royce is one of our long-standing clients and so here at YOU the atmosphere in the office is electric.

The planning for Farnborough Airshow starts months before the event as we all put our heads together to work out how we can set Rolls-Royce’s social media channels apart from other brands at the show. The Rolls-Royce team here at YOU, along with the digital team at Rolls-Royce, spend hours in workshops planning and refining content ideas, and reach out to both the Civil and Defence aerospace marketing teams at Rolls-Royce to uncover their key focusses for the show and establish how we can support them. Tens of draft content plans later, and interviews scheduled for the show to get all the latest product and service updates from the experts!

The show was a bustling hive of activity and nothing can quite prepare you for seeing a full-sized Trent XWB engine on the Rolls-Royce stand. Its fan set has a diameter of over 9ft and attendees queue to take a selfie with it – after all it is the world’s most efficient aero engine; why wouldn’t you be star struck? The British weather did its best to disrupt the event, with the show being evacuated at 3pm on the first day due to severe flooding, but the crowds were back in force on the Tuesday.  They were wowed by the Trent 1000-powered Boeing 787 with its bird-like, silent glide and the F-35B fighter jet that was making a rare, albeit loud, appearance in the UK. The enthusiastic team on the ground interviewed Rolls-Royce employees, partners and customers whilst the solid support team based at YOU headquarters turned round content faster than ever to give Rolls-Royce’s fans a real-time, behind-the-scenes experience of the airshow.

As for the results of all our hard work? Well, we think it is safe to say we smashed it. The numbers were huge and Rolls-Royce was very happy. At YOU we call for everyone to embrace their inner AvGeek. You can’t deny the spectacular sight of a Rolls-Royce engine in all its glory!

We spoke to Shannon Tweed, PR Account Executive at YOU, who achieved a Distinction in the recent IPA Foundation Certificate exam, about how the course broadened her horizons

Most people who work in Public Relations will tell you that the main reason they love it is that no two days are the same. Ironically, this can mean that you put expanding your skillset to the bottom of your to do list. It’s easy to become blinkered in your own discipline, focusing on how you interpret each action point by press activity.

At YOU Agency an integrated approach is key to client services, so I feel quite lucky to be part of a PR team that works alongside social media, creative, marketing and media. When I was invited to take the IPA Foundation Certificate, I saw it as a great opportunity to broaden my knowledge base and grow my understanding of the advertising industry too. After all, the future is most definitely integrated.

On a personal level, it had been quite some time since I had been engaged in an academic course, let’s just say my Memory Palace had become a little dusty… In the end though, I realised how important it is to keep your analytical skills from University alive, and to continue to implement them in your career in order to find insightful solutions and question each strategy.

The course focused on advertising, branding, behavioural theory, and digital marketing which aren’t always elements that you get the opportunity to generate in PR. The course content was hosted entirely online and allowed you the freedom to decide when, where and how you wanted to prepare for the  exam in February.  The online structure included several different avenues of learning including video, tutorials, white papers, and forums.

The YOU Agency ‘Students’ (made up of participants from all departments including, marketing, media and PR) formed a lunchtime study group to test and encourage each other, meaning we could interrogate  every learning path from a different angle. We also organised a few early morning study sessions which were practically sponsored by Costa coffee.

We spoke to Emma Laing about her recent internship with us

 The last two weeks have flown by because of the super people at YOU Agency, who are all so lovely and friendly and have made my time so fantastic. It has been a whirlwind experience, and I have learnt new skills and different things every day from across all departments.

 I didn’t know what to expect from the internship. I knew I was getting involved in an integrated communications agency but what that really meant, I wasn’t so sharp on! However, from 9am on my first Monday morning, I felt so comfortable and included in the team (and pretty quickly found out exactly what integrated communications was!)

 I have gained an array of experience during the two weeks. I started by shadowing the account managers, getting a feel for what it is like keeping all of the teams on track and meeting clients’ needs on a daily basis. I particularly enjoyed listening in on conference calls and meetings, both internal and external. No matter who the client was or what the brief contained, I was invited to join the team and get fully involved in discussions.

 During my internship, I sat within the PR team and this meant I was able to be fully immersed in the department. I had the chance to write case studies and press releases, which is something I haven’t done before, as well as listen to how they speak to journalists. This allowed me to pick up certain skills and even have a go myself. I really loved the PR team’s kindness and patience with me – a little newbie. They gave me reassuring and constructive feedback and scripts to guide me through phone calls which gave me the confidence I needed to pick up the phone.

 I couldn’t recommend an internship with YOU enough, especially for someone like me, who is keen and interested to learn about the industry. They immerse you in the agency culture and work, and provide you with engaging and meaningful tasks that help you to develop skills towards your personal career aspirations.

Supporting our clients at industry events is another great example of how we are always here for YOU.

On the 26th May, Kirk Hoatson – Director at YOU – attended the National Housing Federation’s annual Affordable Home Ownership Conference where two of our clients were presenting. The conference aimed to help answer questions about home ownership and grow understanding of the next steps in delivering affordable housing. Kirk felt it was essential to support our clients at this important event, as well as gain an insight into the latest news in the housing industry.

Our clients presented on ‘Marketing innovation without breaking the bank’ and they attracted an impressive crowd of over 200 – especially notable considering two other presentations were taking place at the same time.

Minnie Dando, Head of Marketing at Hyde Group, and Lauren Nicholson, Head of Marketing at Family Mosaic, gave an interactive presentation on their unique approach to marketing homes, followed by a Q&A. They were open and confident about sharing their innovative and cost effective ways to implement a marketing strategy in an increasingly competitive market. In preparation for the talk we ensured that Minnie and Lauren were ‘conference ready’ by providing them with in-depth media training. This included interacting with a crowd and the press while being interviewed. Lauren later said she found this really beneficial for the event.

Kirk commented “Their presentation went down really well. It was noticeable how many people were taking notes, especially bearing in mind that most of the audience were their competition. It’s quite a big deal to be able to teach your competition how to market itself. It’s clear that everything in the industry is heading full-steam towards digital. It’s also evident that there’s a lack of understanding in what shared ownership means and there’s a constant battle to communicate this to the press and to purchasers. We know that this can’t only be achieved by Shared Ownership Week in the autumn, it needs to be an on-going learning process.”

A long-standing client of You-Agency, the Rolls-Royce social channels were launched in March 2014, with a customer appetite that far exceeded expectations. On a weekly basis we create engaging content for Roll-Royce across a number of their sectors, to help ‘humanise’ the company and promote brand awareness.

With the amount of followers/subscribers increasing on a weekly basis, it’s clear to see that the #AvGeeks and Rolls-Royce fans are attentive and engaged with the content that we’re producing. A perfect example would be the amount of impressions we received in one week for a new video posted on the Rolls-Royce YouTube channel. With 233,000 views from one video in one week, which is the equivalent of 166 days of constant watching, we continue to break targets and increase presence across all platforms.

Take a look at the video that our Rolls-Royce fans just can’t get enough of on YouTube channel: