The JAM Jar

It’s that time of year! All major brands have put their festive thinking caps on, and are dishing out their most creative Christmas campaigns, in the hope of maximising brand awareness and driving consumers into their stores.

Here at JAM towers, we love an engaging Christmas campaign. Christmas adverts are as much a part of the festive season as turkey and presents. Here are five of our favourite campaigns of 2015 so far:

Sainsbury’s Advert – Mog The Cat
Sainsbury’s Marketing and PR team has been forward-thinking this year, by pre-empting the social media response its advert will generate, and formulating a PR strategy around it. The Mog the Cat advert has had an overwhelmingly positive response on social media, with 62% of reactions being positive, 27% neutral and only 11% negative. And research shows that the words most used on Twitter when discussing the advert were ‘festive’, ‘magical’ and ‘charming’. 

John Lewis – #ManOnTheMoon
Another very proactive brand that has linked its Christmas ad campaign with its PR strategy is John Lewis. The brand’s PR team has taken advantage of its Christmas notoriety and generated an infographic comparing the success of this year’s Man on the Moon advert to 2014’s, Monty the Penguin. The chart shows the amount of mentions on Twitter for both years, and even uses an Emoji Analysis to visually illustrate the impact of this year’s campaign. We loved this comparison as it highlights the increasingly significant role social media plays in raising brand awareness.

To see the infographic, click here.

Debenhams – #FoundIt
We love Debenhams’ #FoundIt campaign, which reaches consumers through multiple social media channels, encouraging them to share the moment they found the perfect Christmas gift. Those who share their #FoundIt moment are in with the chance of winning £1,000 to spend in the run up to Christmas. The incentivised campaign drives a high level of engagement with its consumers across all media channels.

Harvey Nichols – Avoid #GiftFace
The #GiftFace campaign highlights the common problem many of us face this time of year –  trying to look pleased with some rather disappointing gifts. The funny and relatable advert has drummed up social media support with use of the hashtag, and has received national coverage with a research story that reveals 72% of us are guilty of the dreaded ‘Gift Face’. This is a good example of a traditional survey PR story at its finest.

Coca Cola – Twitter tour
The return of the Coca Cola truck brings a host of excitement each year, but this year one lucky winner will receive a personal visit from the truck and £5,000 worth of treats. The campaign has had customers engaging and interacting with the tour, by allowing them to reveal the Christmas truck route by interacting on Twitter. Similar to Debenhams, Coca Cola has added a personal touch to its campaign and utilised social media to drive engagement.

JAM’s been working on Christmas campaigns for many of its clients, across all sectors. If you’re looking for creative ways to raise the profile of your brand and you’d like to know what the Jammers could do for you, please contact Jaime@jampr.co.uk.

This month marks JAM’s ninth birthday. Time flies while you’re having fun! Among new business pitches, award ceremonies and implementing some very exciting campaigns, the team is taking time to celebrate this achievement…

Jaime Gee launched JAMpr from her kitchen table in 2006, with nothing more than a laptop, a wealth of big brand experience and unrivalled enthusiasm and tenacity. Two years later, Creative Director, Dave Gee, came on board to launch JAMcreative, enhancing JAM’s offering with his creative flair and design acumen. 

Since then JAM has gone from strength-to-strength – growing from a small Manchester PR agency to an international integrated agency, offering b2b and b2c PR, social media, creative design, branding and web development..

We couldn’t be more proud of our achievements and so to commemorate this milestone we have put together a list of our top nine most memorable moments. Enjoy.

9. Winning ten awards including Outstanding Small Consultancy at the CIPR Pride Awards in 2011 and 2013, and Best Print Design at the 2015 Drum Design Awards for our work with Hydes Brewery.

8. Hijacking the 2010 volcanic ash news to secure fantastic client coverage in leading retail magazine, The Grocer.

7. Retaining our first ever client, C.K tools into our ninth year.

6. Launching the Velcro brand Celebrity Art Challenge to raise funds for Children in Need.

5. Launching the UK’s first official National Employee Motivation Day, on behalf of Argos for Business.

4. Encouraging the UK to ditch the debt for good with a nationwide credit card amnesty on behalf of Kensington Financial Management Consultants.

3. Completing the Bupa Manchester 10km run as a team and then celebrating with massive milkshakes and cakes.

2. Providing pro bono support for the incredibly brave Cycling Scouser on his 10,000 mile solo bike ride from China to Liverpool to raise funds for Anthony Nolan.

1. Recruiting the best Client Services Director in town…our beloved office dog, Maurice

A huge thank you to all our clients and partners for supporting us along the way…here’s to many more successful years!

To find out how JAM could help your business (you never know, you might end up in our top ten moments next year) contact us on 0161 850 0565 or email Jaime@jampr.co.uk.

We are pleased to announce that JAM is now a fully-fledged member of the PRCA!

Founded in 1969, the PRCA is the largest PR association in Europe, representing 18,000 people in agencies, in-house communications teams, and individuals. The PRCA promotes all aspects of public relations and internal communications work, helping teams and individuals maximise the value they deliver to clients and organisations.

JAM’s membership with the PRCA will serve to improve knowledge and best practise within PR, ultimately increasing the already high standard of work we deliver for our clients. As PRCA members, we gain access to invaluable industry data, as well as a wealth of networking opportunities and training events.

The PRCA holds members to a professional charter and set codes of conduct, including a social media policy, ensuring JAM remains ahead of the game, operating at an exceptionally high level within the PR industry.

The PRCA’s media partner, Precise, is another organisation JAM works closely with as part of its full service press office. Precise provides us with a media monitoring and analysis service, helping us as PR professionals, to keep abreast of the news agenda and identify our clients’ presence within the media. In partnership with Precise, JAM adds value to its public relations offering by evaluating press cuttings in order to calculate the success of campaigns and ultimately, determine a client’s return on investment of PR.

A PRCA membership adds another string to the agency’s bow, as it endorses the industry standard of our work and provides consultancy benchmarks.

If you would like to find out what JAM can do for your brand, we’d love to hear from you! Contact Jaime@jampr.co.uk

It’s National Blog Posting Month – a month to celebrate the creative outlet that has taken over the internet, and encourage those who don’t already to join in on the trend. For hardcore participants of “NaBloPoMo”, the month involves writing one post a day, every day for the rest of the month!

But blogging isn’t only a great hobby for personal creativity; it’s also a valuable engagement tool for businesses that can increase SEO and, in the long run, increase sales. Businesses who prioritise blogging are 13 times more likely to enjoy positive return on investment .

Here are our top five reasons why every business should start its own blog:

Drive people to your website
How often do you update your website? It can often be difficult for businesses to improve their SEO and drive traffic to their websites through organic searches. The solution? Blogging creates new indexed pages, which will appear on Google and other search engines. This helps new audiences find your website, especially if you use rich content that is relevant to your target market.

Develop your social media following
Blogs are perfect for sharing on social media networks e.g. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. By sharing interesting content you’ll create brand awareness and attract new audiences who may have never heard of you before.

Turn traffic into leads
With a blog driving traffic to your website, you can use this to generate new leads. By setting up call-to-actions, (e.g. a free trial for a product, free eBook, free webinar), your visitors will give their information in return for your free offer. This is a great way of converting your blog’s traffic into something valuable that will help your sales team, and in the long term, your profits.

Humanise your brand
Blogging creates a personality for your brand and gives it a voice. You can not only talk to your customers about products and services, but also comment on industry issues, market trends, share good news and discuss topics that relate directly to your customers.

Build authority in your industry
A blog is a great way to position yourself as an expert in your field by sharing knowledge and important industry news. This will create trust from not only your customers but from journalists and industry peers. It will also keep you in the forefront of potential customers’ minds so that you’re their first point of call when they decide to make a purchase.

JAMpr is an expert on writing blogs across all sectors for many of its clients. If you’d like advice on starting a blog for your business, the Jammers would be happy to help! Contact Jaime@jampr.co.uk to find out what we can do for your brand.