Pegasus post

‘Guilt Free’ snacking with Elizabeth Hurley

Posted by LauraJ in Celebrity, Clients, Team No comments»

Last week, lucky members of the Holland & Barrett team went to the King’s Road to meet up with Elizabeth Hurley, as she popped into her local branch of the national health food retailer. As well as checking on the progress of her own brand of ‘Guilt Free’ snack bars, Elizabeth took the chance to stock up on healthy diet products and chat to staff about life on her organic farm in Gloucestershire, including the birth of her new  piglet.

Holland & Barrett has been working with Elizabeth since May, after it became the first high street chain to stock her snack bars – which have gone down fantastically well with consumers, the media and the Pegasus office!

New award added to the Pegasus trophy shelf

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Another fantastic achievement last week as Pegasus picked up the Communiqué Award for Best Consumer Health Programme for the successive year.

The educational campaign ‘Once a Week, Take a Peek’, highlights the importance of weekly head lice checks, providing simple advice aimed at tackling parental confusion about how to treat the problem.

The campaign managed to see off tough competition and clearly impressed the judges, who commented, “Such a fine example of medical and consumer tactics working well together. They used a clever, creative platform, uncovering a huge knowledge gap amongst parents. Very thorough and beautifully executed”.

Welcome Jo!

Posted by LauraJ in Health news, Pegasus, Team No comments»

We are delighted to welcome Jo Spadaccino on board in the newly created role as director of our pharma and life sciences division!

Jo, a former Board Director of Cohn & Wolfe will be responsible for leading our PR and healthcare professional education campaigns for existing pharma and consumer health clients, as well as driving new business in UK and international markets.

Jo’s appointment is an exciting step forward for us as she will strengthen our senior management team and her experience advising leading pharmaceutical companies will bolster our offering in an increasingly patient-focused marketplace.

Jo is looking forward to swapping commuting into London for a short journey along the coast – giving her more time to spend in her home town Brighton, spending the summer evenings on the beach and driving around in her much loved Nissan Figaro. 

Pegasus speaks up

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Beauty team members, Helen Yeardsley and Sam Humphrey gave a seminar at the prestigious Natural and Organic Products Europe Show last weekend. Titled “Understanding the Natural Beauty Consumer”, their 45 minute session looked at what consumers understand about natural beauty, the role of social and traditional media and how best to use these channels to connect with your audience. Judging by the full house and excellent response afterwards, they both hope to be back next year.

We do like to be beside the seaside….

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We’ve always known it, but now it’s official. When it comes to a career in communications, you won’t find too many better places to work than here.

News has reached us that we’ve come second in the annual Holmes Report ‘Best UK Consultancy to Work For’ survey. With more than 40 top firms taking part and a top ten featuring some great consultancies, it’s no surprise that we are all feeling pretty chuffed.

We also happen to be recruiting at all levels, so go on, drop us a line. You know you want to.

The Magnificent Seven

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Following on from the eight awards we won last year – including a hat-trick of OTC Campaign of the Year titles - we’ve started the year with a flourish, gaining seven nominations at the year’s first two ceremonies.

At the OTC Marketing Awards, campaigns for Covonia and Nasacort will battle it out for Best OTC PR Campaign for a Medicine, while our launch of the weight management product, APPEsat competes in the Non Medicine category. At the Fresh Awards, we have four nominations – Media Relations Campaign,  Consumer Campaign, Stunt and Team of the Year.

Let’s hope we get to update this post with some even better news when the results are in.

Keeping on running!

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Account director, Chris Webb dusted off his running trainers and hit the road for the Great South Run in Portsmouth on 25 October.  Over 21 thousand runners made the trip around the 10 mile course on a sunny, but very windy day.  Back in April this year Chris ran the London Marathon for the first time, completing both events to raise money for  Leukaemia Care, a cause close to his heart.  Chris said, “I would like to say a big thank you to everyone that generously sponsored me for these events, in total we raised more than £3000.  The atmosphere for both runs was incredible and the crowds, particularly for the London Marathon, make a huge difference.  My goal for next year is the Great North Run and perhaps the New York Marathon.”

Pegasus wins CIPR Pride ‘Consultancy of the Year’

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Last night, the corks flew as Pegasus was crowned Outstanding Consultancy of the Year 2009 at the CIPR Pride Awards. As well as picking up the top award, the team picked up awards for ‘Best Media Relations’ and ‘Best Consumer Relations’ campaigns. The perfect way to start the end of the year.

PR, sales and the age old debate

Posted by Stuart in Health news, Team No comments»

By Simon

You may have noticed on our new website (and our all our marketing materials) that we are not a typical PR agency, but a comms agency that uses an integrated approach. In this post, a time old industry debate provides the perfect opportunity to explain why.

In the meeting rooms throughout the land and now in PR blogosphere there is one thread that continually crops up – what is PR really about? Well, it’s hard to give a quick and straight forward answer for several reasons:

- PR is a descriptive for a number of different tactics, everything from media relations to key opinion leader development

- As such, it is used by different organisations in different ways

- I am not sure there is industry consensus as to what the answer is

But hats off to one blog, PR-Squared, who gave it a crack and came up with an interesting explanation. The whole entry is here - but the gist is that PR is not sales, it is about engaging people in the sales process. It is about making them think that they must go to that website, call that number or go into that store. But once they are there, it is down to the ‘sales team’ to get the sale.

So what does this mean? Well, to us this means that if PR is being used as a sales tool, then we have to really understand our client’s business. We have to look outside our traditional PR remit and identify potential issues on the customer journey that will prevent the sale and look for opportunities to add value, and then get involved – a great example is if we are driving customers to website to make a purchase, we should be ensuring that the content on the site and purchasing experience is as inspiring as the campaign that go them there. This is why we believe that we need to ask our clients as many, sometimes probing, questions about their business as possible throughout the briefing process and beyond, and that integrated approaches where messaging is consistent work best.

So the moral of this missive is, please don’t keep us in a PR box, our campaigns work better outside it.

A problem shared, a campaign rewarded

Posted by Stuart in Clients, Team No comments»

By Rebecca

The corks flew again last night, this time at the Communique Awards, as we picked up yet another OTC prize.

In an impressive show, our campaigns occupied three of the four nomination places for the prestigious ‘Best OTC Product Campaign’ award – Hedrin’s ‘Once a Week, Take a Peek’, Covonia’s – ‘Winning the Cold War’ and Colief’s ‘A Problem Shared.

In the end, Colief’s ‘A Problem Shared’ triumphed over the bugs and the bulls with their visually creative campaign that used a striking image of England rugby star, Ben Cohen recreating the famous Athena poster, L’Enfant. The judges said, “The image appealed to both sexes and created healthy debate…the male image was a genuinely clever idea.”

Not content with one prize, Hedrin’s ‘Once A Week, Take A Peek’ campaign was ‘Highly Commended’ in the ‘Best Patient or Public Campaign’ – a brilliant result against some tough competition. The judges said, “Great campaign – loved the text service to parents. This is great marketing.”

We’ve now won back to back ‘Best OTC Campaign’ awards two of the most prestigious healthcare ceremonies of the year. We are feeling proud today!