In a month that has been dominated by the toughest of news, work hasn’t been easy. It’s a credit to the team here that we pulled together, paid our respects, and continued to work hard for our clients.
This month, we ran a press day in London, sponsored a travel comms events in Manchester, and walked away with not one but two new major new awards.
To begin with, though, we feel it only right to reiterate our condolences at last week’s tragic events here in our hometown. Our MD Rick Guttridge has written this tribute to the victims and heroes of that fateful Monday night, which goes into greater detail about how this has impacted everyone in the city, including us here on Bridge Street.
Away from the Arena, our agency just bagged a further two industry gongs. AMEC- the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication- handed us both a gold and silver AMEC Award at its recent ceremony, lauding our work for Bright HR and Silentnight as Most Effective B2B and Consumer PR Campaign respectively. With more than 40 trophies now in our possession, paraphrasing Jaws seems appropriate… we’re going to need a bigger cabinet.
[Tweet “@SmokingGunPR wins two AMEC awards- fine work from #Manchester”]
And our month was capped off with not one but two major events, taking place in the U.K.’s two finest metropoles. Our international health and fitness client, Les Mills, held a media day in London, taking control of the Sky Garden in the iconic Walkie Talkie building, with the aim of putting 15 journalists through their paces and promoting the benefits of HIIT training; that’s High Impact Interval Training for those who prefer sofas to squat thrusts.
The special class- taking place 155metres above street level- have the attendant press an insight into how challenging, but most importantly how rewarding this type of exercise is. Key media from the women’s consumer, health and fitness, and national daily sectors were all present and correct. Aches and pains in the days that followed aside, the push was a huge success.
As we mentioned during the last couple of months, Smoking Gun PR was honoured to sponsor the ABTA Crisis Communications Event, whereby the great and good of the UK travel industry descended on Manchester’s prestigious Midland Hotel for a crash course in dousing the flames of a brand wildfire. Offering practical advice, examples of best practice, and training in developing better strategies, our involvement was fitting given our experience in travel PR, and the feedback unanimously positive, not least following a presentation on social media use during crises given by our own big gun, Rick Guttridge.
[Tweet “All the latest news from the most ingenious agency in #Manchester – @SmokingGunPR”]
Aside from all this, it’s very much been business as usual, tirelessly toiling to ensure the companies we care about are constantly in the public eye, through social media and press outreach. As ever, we’ve also gone to great lengths to practice what we preach, and so we’ll leave you with this roundup of the best moments from Smoking Gun’s own social channels over the past four weeks.

Looking for more advice on PR, social media, and marketing? Why not get in contact or submit a brief to inject a little ingeniousness into your brand.