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Conduct interviews and write features and tips for Property Hub magazine. This is a subscription-only, quarterly magazine launched in 2015 for landlords and the property development market.

See www.thepropertyhub.net

pride-gold-award-sja-yep-28-nov-2015Delighted to announce that a campaign I ran for St John Ambulance in Yorkshire and the Humber last night won GOLD in the Regional Campaign of the Year category of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) 2015 PRide Awards.

The First Aid for All campaign, run with the Yorkshire Evening Post to encourage more than 500 people in Leeds to take first aid courses, also won SILVER for Best Low Budget Campaign (it only cost £100!).

The 12-month campaign required energy and creative thinking to provide fresh ideas for website and social media content, as well as a constant flow of traditional newspaper stories.

The awards judges said the scheme was a “remarkable – and very possibly life-saving region wide campaign”. They also commented on the “strategy and the legacy” it had secured for St John Ambulance in Leeds and further afield.

Read YEP article: first-class-yep-28-nov

YEP First AId for all logoAs a member of the award-winning PR team for first aid charity St John Ambulance for three years, I was involved in a number of successful print, broadcast and social media campaigns, with a brief for Yorkshire and the Humber.

Of particular note is a campaign I led with the Yorkshire Evening Post to get more people in Leeds trained in first aid and to boost the charity’s volunteer numbers. It was awarded Regional Campaign Gold in the CIPR Pride awards and Silver for Low Budget.

I was also on the team behind the Chokeables campaign, which won Gold in the CIPR national Healthcare campaign award. This multi-media campaign centred around an animation giving first aid advice using TV, radio, print and social media. It was viewed 6m times on Youtube, 2m times on Facebook and directly linked to saving the lives of 50 babies.

Watch the video here: thechokeables

 

Yorkshire Dales Spring 13 frontWork on this bi-annual newspaper to promote the National Park involved many phone and face-to-face interviews. Plus, one rather challenging day on the freezing slopes of Ingleborough mountain photographing and talking to children while they bravely planted trees.

Read in full:  Yorkshire Dales National Park Spring 2013

Narator aug 2012This conference hosted by industry association, Nara, featured high profile speakers from the banking and property sectors covering topics from economic bubbles to Greece and the Euro. I did the write-ups for this newsletter, distributed to members, partners and clients.

Read in full: Narator Aug 2012

 

People trying to write a press release for the first time may be tempted to produce something of a fairy tale.

That’s not to say their piece will be full of fancy, but its structure is likely to be along the lines of  “Once upon a time” and “they all lived happily ever after.” (Or not). It’s a natural part of storytelling to start at the beginning and finish at the end.

Not in a news story

You can forget this literary world order when you’re writing a news release. You have to wade in with a comprehensive punch line at the start and trail off anticlimactically – concluding with less interesting leftovers that can be chucked out by an editor short on space or time.

The bits in between must be ordered exactly according to priority, with no extraneous matter. Irrelevant adjectives must be exiled forever.

Imagine your friend on the other side of a busy road shouts to you, “What’s happening?” and you have to tell them quickly and clearly to be understood above the noise.

Sounds simple, but of course it isn’t. Journalists spend years honing this topsy-turvy craft and that’s one of a number of reasons why it helps to have one on your PR team.

If the person reading your release  – from the newsdesk assistant to the editor – doesn’t get it pretty quickly, your or your client’s story won’t get told.

 

  • supermarket Asda, pharmacy Boots, international law firm DLA Piper, water group Kelda, housing provider Anchor, industrial services plc Cape, consumer products giant P&G, water supplier United Utilities, professional services corporate Tribal, Huddersfield University and York University, office space provider Regus, global insurer AIG, financial outsourcer HML and government departments and agencies for health, education and trade

A Yorkshire Post staffer for many years and twice named in the top six of business reporters in national awards, I am still very much a journalist at heart.

I keep my hand in with regularly published articles where my skills in interviewing, shorthand, angle-finding and crisp writing are put to good use.

Always on the lookout for interesting snippets, profile candidates and feature ideas – so please e-mail me your news and suggestions.

I had a lot of fun interviewing Asda employees and writing about everything from their involvement with the food on sale to their marvellous charitable activities (produced by Words and Pictures)