I had the balls to go to counselling!

A Leeds Met student has won a poster competition aimed at raising the awareness of mental health amongst young men.

John Barton, a second year Graphic Design student at our University was crowned the winner of the 'Big Boys Should Cry' campaign which was set up by the Leeds Met Students' Union.
The campaign aims to raise the awareness of the Leeds Met Counselling Service amongst young male students and to break down the stigma attached to men seeking counselling. The winning poster which was entitled "I had the balls to go to counselling" was chosen from a shortlist of 12 and will appear in around 25 participating bars and clubs regularly visited by male students.

Adam Burns, PR Officer for Leeds Metropolitan's Students' Union said: "Male students should not feel embarrassed about seeking counselling and this is what we hope John's poster will communicate to them. The counselling services is a fantastic outlet for people to share their problems however big or small and we want more male students to feel comfortable to do this rather than suffer in silence."

Counsellor at Leeds Met, Sue Dominey said: "It can be difficult to admit you are experiencing problems, feeling emotionallly upset and worried, if everyone else around you appears fine. Sometimes men wear a 'mask of cool' on the outside, which hides inner distress and vulnerablilty. I believe it is a sign of strength and courage for a man to ask for help."

Not only does John's poster become the face of the Big Boys Should Cry campaign, his prize also includes gig tickets for The Cockpit, a book on poster design from OK Comics and a gym membership.

John said: "I wanted my poster to be memorable and to really make a differeance to the lives of my fellow male students. I felt it was important to add a touch of humour, however. Behind the humour, the poster maintains a powerful underlining message that it takes guts and honesty to seek counselling

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it

It has been nearly 3 weeks since our last post and although I have been inundated with messages (Thanks Mum) to tell our hungry audience about the recent goings on in the PR office, we have simply been too busy!!

The "Big Boys Should Cry" campaign is generating some good coverage already. Richard Bailey was kind enough to mention it in Behind the Spin and the Leeds Met press office also covered the story. Another big thank you must go to Neill Crispian as he has created a permanent banner for the Counselling service (It's the second from last image). Not sure who the ginger bearded model is, but he plays "young troubled man" superbly in my opinion!!

The poster competition winner is decided this week and I have to say the standard of entries is just superb!!! We are hopefully having Aidan Winterburn a graphic design lecturer and Sue Dominey a counsellor at Leeds Met judging the entries.

In other news the team were part of the BBC's attempt to break the world record for planting the most trees in one hour. Yes it was Tree O’clock. Clare and I flexed our green fingers and helped plant 1000 trees on the Hawksforth Estate in Leeds. We will find out on the 14th whether or not the record has been broken, but regardless it was a fun day and our efforts have made the Hawksforth Estate a much greener area!! We will hopefully have some nice coverage in the YEP this week, so look out for it Mum.

Look at what Clare and I conjured up on Friday. It was lots of fun, but has struggled to gain coverage thus far (It does not reflect the views of the Students Union or the University). We will soldier on, you never know it might be on "Have I got news for you" next week!

Another personal achievement for yours truly coming your way this week. This may warrant double pocket money Mum. Stay tuned.

Throw a lucky man in the sea, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth

PRCA Guest Lecture

How & when to sell digital PR to a client

I've got to say, without sounding like a creepy little brown nose, that PR students at Leeds Met are lucky little buggers. We are on a weekly basis treated with talks from industry professionals all eager to give us an insight into how we can best equip ourselves as we take our first small steps in to the world of PR. We are of course paying for the privilege and I'm sure most would argue that our fees warrant such calibre of guests, however what has impressed me is the energy the speakers have exerted, they haven't used the ninety minutes to massage their egos, quite the opposite in fact. They've willingly laid bare their experiences and filled our pockets with pearls of wisdom which will enable us to hopefully follow in their footsteps. This year we have heard from Daryl Wilcox, Andy Carter, Andy Green, Carl Christopher and this week Fernando Rizo from KetchumPleon educated and entertained in his thick New York accent.

Yes we had our first American speaker and just like Jack, the kid who joined my middle school after moving from Arizona and was straight away know as "the cool American kid", Fernando had his audience hanging on his every word. He was also pretty funny, like a cool Ross Gellar, sickening. Fernando aimed to teach us "How and when to sell digital PR to a client" and after some ironic technical difficulties, resolved by Theilmann the German tech master, we were on our way.

Fernando began by talking us through the evolution of the media, he explained throughout history the dissemination of ideas to media was solely dependent on capital investment, until of course the internet was born and everyone inherited the power to publish, "even the stamp collector from Belgrade". Answer this rhetorical question Fernando then asked "Is the New York Times print based media or online?" his answer, "Who gives a crap! No traditional media worth its salt should be without an online presence" he bellowed in his Regis Philbin like tones.

Fernando went on to talk about something I have always found hard, creating an audience, he began by asking how many of us had a blog, a stupid question really as it's probably the first thing Richard Bailey told us to do, Fernando followed this up by asking how many of these blogs have a bigger following than “your mum and your room mate” or house mate for you English types. Of course a few of the smarmy students kept their hands up, but most conceded their blogs had audiences similar to that of an "Audience with John Barrowman" on the day England face Germany in the World Cup Final. Fernando's point was clear, it's very difficult, expensive and time consuming to create a brand new audience and much easier to borrow or steal from a community that already exists. The example we were shown was Open Forum, a resource for small businesses. Open Forum purchased content from influential bloggers and posted it on the website, therefore borrowing an audience which already exists.

Fernando went on to show us his favourite example of bad PR and told us "If you ever find an example of bad PR keep it and learn from it", his point being of course you are unlikely to hear about poor PR campaigns. His was from an American tuna company who had teamed up with the American Apprentice and asked people to come up with a new idea for a tuna product and pitch it to them in an online video. Fernando explained that offline to online tie-ins very rarely work and that although this campaign was opportunistic, it was neither strategic nor defined the personality of the brand in any way.

I always enjoy lectures in which we are presented with examples of campaigns that practitioners feel illustrate their point and Fernando certainly delivered in this area. Other successful campaigns that the American maestro had worked on himself included the bounty for the “Montauk Monster” on behalf of an energy drink called Venom and a campaign for Stride gum who wanted to target 18 to 24 year old computer gamers. The latter started by reading something said by Uwe Boll a German film director famous for transforming computer games in to disastrously bad films, he was quoted as saying “If the petition to stop me making films reaches 1 million signatures then I will retire”. On behalf of Stride Gum Fernando’s team jumped on this and gained as much coverage as possible for the petition using influential computer game bloggers and journalists. Needless to say the petition reached its target. The Stride Gum campaign was indeed opportunistic and incredibly topical and Fernando explained that these type of campaigns are made possible because of the “marrying up of account executives interests with what they work on” he went on to say that he himself would never be able to run a campaign for a gardening magazine “It just wouldn’t happen” he said.

Favourite quote of the guest lecture: “When Google takes over the world, I hope they eat me last”

I left the Rose Bowl inspired to make my next PR campaign innovative, cheeky and for it to be a success both in traditional and digital media. I am currently working with Leeds Carnegie Men’s Football in an attempt to improve the attendances at games. I believe this a perfect example to launch a digital media campaign as a large majority of our target audience, students, will use digital media daily. I will keep you updated.

I would also like to congratulate myself for finding £20 on the street the other day. Here I am celebrating just after the fortunate event. I did the honourable thing though and put the money back in to the local community, well I should say temporary local community as I treated myself and Gem to beers, mulled wine and Bratwurst at the German Christmas Market.

For now I bid you a fond Farewell, auf Wiedersehen, Goodnight.

Adam

Meet our team...Elizabeth Taylor

My name is Elizabeth Taylor, I'm from Manchester and I’m a second year Public Relations student. I am often asked, “Did your parents name you after the actress?” My boyfriend also likes to try and embarrass me by laughing out loud and saying, “No it's not don't be silly” when I use my name in a shop! But no, my parents just loved the name Elizabeth, as do I!

I truly love my home city, but decided to flee the nest to conquer another big city, Leeds. A year on, Leeds has made me feel very welcome. I lived in halls where I had an amazing time and really found my feet (as well as new friends). Now, myself and two girlfriends have a beautiful ''apartment'' in Headingley, Leeds students' haven.

This year I am determined to get my foot in the door in the PR industry. I currently have a weekly placement in the PR department at Brahm, a large marketing company. I am finding the experience of being in an agency extremely valuable and looking forward to developing my skills further. I am also interested in gaining more experience in different sectors, perhaps from in-house departments. I have proved my dedication to the industry by becoming a member of the CIPR. After attending the CIPR guest lectures at University and especially Andy Carter’s lecture from Leeds City Council press office, the public sector is definitely an area I would like to further my knowledge in.

I’m excited to be part of the Student Union’s PR Unit. It is a relatively new project and I’m sure that with hard work and effort as a team it can be a successful project. I am especially looking forward to working on the ‘Mind Your Head’ campaign, more information will be blogged soon!

In University I am a ‘STAR’. Obviously I’m brilliant, but this actually stands for ‘Student Academic Representative’. This means I attend monthly meetings with staff during which I represent my classmates, and can express their opinions on anything that is bugging them or that they particularly enjoy I am also part of the volunteering society, CALM (community action @ Leeds Met),I love helping those people who are less-fortunate, it is thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling. I have recently become the secretary for the committee so I am looking forward to becoming even more involved. Please keep an eye on our blog for the latest press releases!

At the weekends I work for an event catering company which gives me the chance to work at different types of private functions, such as weddings, birthday parties and many others. It's giving me an insight into how large events are organised and managed from start to finish.

To end, I would like to share with you my three favourite things in the world: Twilight, DHL Vans and Jedward off X-Factor (get voting people!).

A SPOOKILY good week for the team!

Well would you Adam and Eve it, we only went and won the Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger competitive pitch! We got the news on Friday afternoon that Paws Communications would be the very first "Student PR consultancy" working under the very experienced mentorship of Nathan Lane and Marie O'Connor (Pictured with the Paws team, minus myself).

The opportunity is incredibly unique as it gives students the chance to work with real clients, to be mentored by PR professionals and to get paid an hourly rate the equivalent of an account assistant. I had heard a few whispers that Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger offers some of the most valuable work experience from a few friends and Beth Stallman seems to agree.

I celebrated the win by spending Friday night belting out my best Bruce Springsteen impersonation at my friend’s birthday celebrations in OK Karaoke! To say it went down a storm would be the understatement of the year, I strategically made sure I sung last as after four more pints the boys could have been stranded by Jedward and would have still gave them a standing ovation.


I spent Halloween in York at one of the many events hosted by the city. The York tourist board had really embraced Halloween and the feeling in the city was electric. I treated my girlfriend to a very pleasant dining experience at Piccolino Restaurant and Bar, (the football accumulator had earlier come up trumps, I'm not always this flash) it was fit for bursting and many of the diners were in fancy dress, including me.....(See scary man on the left)

After some lovely meatballs washed down with a decadent pinot grigio we left Piccalinos and headed, a little tipsy, for one of the many ghost walks starting at Clifford Tower. As we approached there was a crowd of about 50 people listening intently to a Richard O'Brien (of The Crystal Maze fame) lookalike who was spouting about some ghostly nonsense. He took us on a tour of the city in which we encountered the most haunted pub in York and Starbucks outlet that some years previous was the site of some paranormal activity. The paranormal activity took place when the store was a JJB Sports and apparently shoes would line themselves up in circles at night, very spooky. That’s about as scary as it got, I just enjoyed heckling from the back, "Give us a tune on your harmonica Richard!".

As weekends go it probably the second best I have ever had, the first best was when I went to Silverstone and shook Jackie Stewarts hand. Brilliant." A bit of Partridge for you.So things at the PR unit are coming along nicely, we have will be launching our campaign to raise awareness of the universities counselling service this week and have sourced some great prizes from some very generous company's, so thank you to The Cockpit, Ok Comics and Esporta Gym.

Also something I have been working on is our blogs' search engine optimization (SEO) and I think we're doing ruddy well indeed. A search for "Leeds PR Blog" in Google ranks us at NUMBER 1! Look for yourself....

This week I will also feature a profile on our team, so keep reading!!!

Bye for now.

Adam

And the winner is.......

The most hectic week of second year PR has just been and gone. A competitive pitch, a university presentation, a guest lecture, an enterprise evening and a trip to London all squashed in to one week. The passing of this week means that now I will be dedicating more of my time to work on Student Union projects, as well as putting together the team that will lead the PR unit through the year.

On Monday the PR students at Leeds Met were treated to a lecture from head of communications for Leeds City Council, Andy Carter. On the surface it seemed this would probably not be as exciting as Carl Christopher from Playstation, who intrigued us with talk of Richard Benson and The Face Magazine, however by the end of Andy's talk I was ready to welcome Leeds County Council in to the Zeitgeist.

The whole talk centred around how Andy's team had dragged the council kicking and screaming into the digital age, with its very own virtual newsroom. Andy talked of how some senior councillors were very much stuck in their ways. Most were happy enough to have the tone of their day dictated solely by The Evening News, and that the concept of an online newsroom was alien to say the least. We were shown the falling readership figures of our regional newspapers, which amongst other factors including the rise of the internet, staff cut backs and shifting audiences had taken the council's comms team from press office to digital news room.

All in all a surprisingly entertaining lecture. I went in expecting the content, although very relevant to my PR degree, to be rather dull and it wasn't in the slightest. Andy even threw in a few jokes, and although I find the line between a funny lecture and just sounding like David Brent a tricky one to walk, Andy kept the cringe worthy gags down to an absolute minimum and was genuinely entertaining. He also offered a placement opportunity which I have since applied for.

After a busy middle of the week which included a presentation on persuasion and rhetoric, in which we scored a healthy 2:1, concentration turned to the upcoming competitive pitch. Described by Lucy Laville as "A unique opportunity and a first for the PR course" competition between the level two PR students was sure to be fierce. Nathan Lane from Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger was offering five students the chance to become the very first "student consultancy". Working on real clients and being mentored by the experienced Bell Pottinger team this was a chance that few could afford to pass up.

The brief was to produce a campaign for Nestle who were launching a new character, Bluebell the Milkybar cow, as part of their CSR initiative to reduce the packaging in their Easter egg range. To view our presentation please click here. Obviously you will not get the full effect of being guided through the wonderful world of Bluebell by myself and Steph, but it may be helpful to fellow students.We are still awaiting the result of the Bell Pottinger pitch, it's like the last day of the football season when your team is teetering on the edge of relegation and the other team hasn’t finished playing yet. Ironically I'm a Newcastle fan so this analogy doesn't work, but we live in hope.

Now everything is quiet on the university PR front, I can concentrate my efforts on the PR unit. We have some really exciting projects coming up and by the end of next week will have filled all the managerial positions. We are currently working with the universities counselling department to raise awareness amongst young men of the facilities available to them, if they are suffering from any kind of mental illness. It's the first campaign that I have worked on that in essence could really change people’s lives, this for me makes it a rather exciting one. As well as this we are running the Hall Representative election process, the first of its kind at Leeds Met. Finally we are part of the national attempt to break the world record for planting the most trees in an hour, a world record, a PR's dream!!!

Anyway must dash as I'm meeting my beautiful girlfriend (she still hasn't let the swine flu article go) for some tea at Browns. Yum.

Adam

Monday Monday

I had a bloody cracking Monday this week, the best Monday for ages. Let me share the higlights.My usual Monday morning involves driving my spectacularly better looking over half (I'm still in the dog house after the swine flu article I wrote) to work from Doncaster to Wakefield, she has just been appointed communications assistant at Wakefield NHS. After I drop her off, I immediately switch frequency from the babbling buffoonery of Chris "my definition of comedy is playing annoying sound bites of Strictly Come Dancing judges laughing" Moyles, to the voice of reason and some underrated witticism of Nicky Campbell. The topic of discussion was David Cameron's plans to cut the incapacity benefit by £25 and enforce more stringent tests to vet the supposed incapacitated masses. I'm all for getting the lazy sponges who abuse the system out from in front of their 50inch tax payer bought moron boxes, they can always Sky plus the Jeremy Kyle show.

The worrying part of the discussion came from a man in his fifties who had lost his sight two years previous and after a long career working in the manufacturing industry was forced to claim benefits. He told Nicky that he was "suicidal" over the thought of losing £25 of his £92.50 that he gets weekly. Obviously the gentleman was a legitimate claimer and Nicky tried his hardest to re-assure him that Cameron's proposal would only affect the fraudsters. It was clear that Cameron's plans had worried many and although some of his messages seemed to have been lost in translation, I do think he should have set clearer guidelines in his proposal before scaring the wits out of the genuine cases. Politics hasn't previously been a passion of mine, but I have to admit as uncool as it is I am starting to get rather interested in the political ding dong between Brown and Cameron.

Monday ended as beautifully as it started, I shared an evening with my gorgeous, intelligent and funny girlfriend (You can almost hear the shovel). We attended a Lecture by the head of sponsorship and promotion at Sony, Carl Christopher. He was a refreshing change from the usual "suits" who give our guest lectures, dressed in Fred Perry cardigan and black jeans, he reminded me that P.R is cool. With talk of Richard Benson and Kate Moss he explained how his team took the Playstaion brand from the niche markets to the global stage. Playstation embraced counter culture, made journalists speak their language and gave consumers an experience not just a video game. Carl crammed Playstations lifetime into an exciting one hour dialogue, he talked of the rise of the celebrity and how brands no longer have mystery. These days Playstation will use Kate Moss to launch their products, like in the case of the Singstar game, whereas ten years ago they would use niche magazines like Vince Noir's favourite "The Face". Instead of sending their newest games to influential journalists to create the "water cooler moments" they now inundate premiership footballers with piles of equipment.

Carl concluded by offering his opinion on what is the best personal attribute to have in PR, he told us that honesty and transparency will get you a long way, as long as you are driven of course. All in all a very interesting evening.

The group pitch for Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger is coming along very nicely, watch this space!