Take a walk on the wild side: Intern Opportunity

Wildwood PR have an exciting opportunity for an University intern to join as part of the Wildwood 2012-13 placement programme.

Who wants the hassle of London commuting, expensive rents, pollution, grime and crime, when you can get excellent and diverse PR experience at an award-winning agency in the heart of the beautiful, sunny Sussex countryside?

West Sussex-based Wildwood Public Relations is seeking to recruit an industrial placement student to work on its range of business to business and business to consumer clients.

We’re the built environment specialists with an approach that’s seen us go from strength to strength in recent years. Our clients feature extensively in the fast-growing home automation sector, many of them providing the glitzy home cinema and hi-tech multi-room audio systems for properties and mega-yachts belonging to TV stars, Premiership footballers and Russian billionaires amongst others.  We also represent clients at the cutting edge of green technology for residential and commercial buildings alongside less glamorous, but equally challenging clients, covering everything from roof slates to car dealerships.

The successful candidate will become an Account Executive, working as an integral part of our 10-strong team, where you’ll be expected to share in the creativity, energy, enthusiasm and above all, enjoyment we all have for our work.

What you’re learning on the course, you’ll have the chance to put into practice. Responsibilities include

• Liaising directly with the media and clients, and building strong long term relationships
• Drafting and issuing press releases
• Generating media coverage
• Monitoring forward features
• Co-ordinating client reports
• Events organisation / management
• General administrative support

We’ll provide you with all the help you need to develop plus give you access to our staff training programme, giving you the chance to put your initiative, talent and skills to good use.

If you’re a good communicator, well-organised, able to multi-task and keen to find out what PR is really all about from The Sunday Times and Grand Designs to Housing Association Building & Maintenance and H&V News, and then we’d like to hear from you. Ideally, we’re looking for someone to start work from June 2012 onwards, but it could be earlier to suit your needs.

You will earn a basic salary of £14,500 and will be entitled to 20 days paid holiday. Interns get plenty of opportunities to shine and also benefit from our ongoing staff training and mentoring programme. Please send your CV and a covering letter to Jeff Hayward, email jeff.hayward@wildwoodpr.co.uk. Own car essential.

For more information, visit www.wildwoodpr.co.uk.

Closing date for applications: Friday 24 February 2012

Dear Santa…

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So we were having a chat in the office this afternoon about fantasy letters to Santa.  We thought we’d share them with you for amusement (many of these gifts are not available in the shops – whatever the state of the British high street!).  Hope you enjoy our musings…now, back to that press release…

Dear Santa (and these are in no particular order…),

Wildwood would like for Christmas…..

For Christmas this year, Jeff would like an automatic inbox reviewer to sift through all the emails that land in his inbox when he’s out at a meeting – dealing with them before he returns to the office. And if such a gift could be bundled with a rich tea biscuit dispenser that automatically delivers three biscuits to his desk each afternoon with a cup of tea – that would be heaven!

Leah would like a Lie Detector, so that she can get lots of juicy gossip from journalists and competitors. This would help her to make our clients the best- not that they aren’t already…!

Lauren wouldn’t mind a Cloning Machine for Christmas this year – so that her clone could do her training and run the Lifestyle Renault Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon in February. Her clone could also fill in for her if she needs a lie-in to recover from the Christmas celebrations.

This year, Ally would love a boiling tap installed at her desk, so that she can have an endless supply of peppermint tea. With a hot cuppa on tap she can deal with as many features, press releases and case studies that you can throw at her! What a fantastic way to remain calm and refreshed throughout 2012.

Tanya wouldn’t mind travelling in style, and would really like a Jaunting Belt from The Tomorrow People (remember that TV show?). No more of that time-consuming driving nonsense…. she’ll be able to snap her fingers and will be at her destination instantly.  Bet she still leaves the office later than planned though…!

For Christmas, Becky would like a Soda Stream so that she can have plenty of caffeine filled goodness without having to leave the comfort of the office. Not only will it keep her awake longer, but she’ll work like the clappers! Failing that, Bernard’s watch wouldn’t go a miss….

This year for Christmas, Ruth would love a set of wings. Then she could fly around organising all her case studies and get to lots of photo shoots, even in the most remote areas of the world. At least then she wouldn’t get stuck in traffic jams!

This year, Shereen would like to find a Wildwood Chef under the Christmas tree. That way bacon butties would be on hand as soon as she steps into the office each morning.

On the top of John’s Christmas list this year is a top of the range espresso maker.  A connoisseur of coffee, the strength of the brew matters to John.  The stronger, the better and he’s happy – and of course, his writing and afternoon meetings will whizz along …

Ash would like to wake up on Christmas morning with Audrey Tautou, have Pierre Koffman cook his lunch, attend an Operation Ivy reunion show in the evening, drink some Margaux 82 before bed and world peace. If that’s too greedy, world peace can wait another year.

And as for Valerie, who runs our Accounts Department – she’d love something BIG… as Val says – A BIG desk for my ever growing job…A BIG mug so that my lovely cuppa lasts twice as long… BIG calculators with BIG numbers for my poor old eyes….but please could I also have something small…like a BIG DIAMOND!

 

Becky

Crisis, what crisis?

A couple of weeks ago we had the one of those glorious days when appearing on the news agenda were a couple of stories that could only happen in Britain: a tanker load of spilt marmite causing havoc on the M1; and the news that over 75% of oysters we eat are infected with the norovirus. If there are two things that are more guaranteed to divide and provoke opinion than Marmite and oysters, then I’d like to know what they are.

Marmite cleverly manages to trade on this love/hate relationship. Somehow the idea of a load of it spread all over the road is funny – even with all the disruption it caused. Cue lots of jokes and Marmite trending on Twitter. For Unilever (the makers of Marmite) the M1 story was perfect timing as it buried the news about a strike at their plant over the company’s plans to shut their final salary pension scheme. Strikes are not good for the share price so there would have been a few sighs of relief at Marmite HQ.

The oysters story was not so funny. What was needed was a reassuring PR message from someone in the industry to calm the nerves of nervous diners. But what did we get from the Shellfish Association of Great Britain: “Just because we know about norovirus does not mean that we should be frightened by it.” Really? A few days of sickness and vomiting isn’t exactly a walk in the park and to know that three quarters of all oysters in theUKare infected is a tough message to spin.

Crisis management is the ultimate test for any PR Pro – but I’d like to see a graph of oyster sales over the coming months – it will probably look something like the North Face of the Eiger – and not in a good way. I’m sticking to Marmite, for now – pun intended.

John

A Wildwood Adventure…

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In February 2012 five members from the Wildwood PR team will be running a half marathon to raise money for the Pickering Cancer drop-in centre, for their client Lifestyle Europe.

On Sunday 26th February 2012, I will be joining my colleagues at the start line amongst famous and practiced runners such as Liz Yelling, in an attempt to make it round the 13 mile course. I am not a runner; in fact I find it difficult to run for the bus, so for me this will be an interesting day! Luckily several of the team at Wildwood frequently go running and are on hand to give us tips and training advice.

The race is a “testing, single-lap course through some of Kent’s finest countryside.” ‘Testing’ sounds pretty worrying to me, and I’m a little unsure what I was thinking when I said I would take part. I need to take drastic action to make sure that I make it to the finish line, so we have been training on our lunch breaks to help us get up to speed.

Today was my third training session, which probably should be about my 8th, and I finally think I have been motivated. Leah and I set off for an easy walk/run down a country lane, trying to mix up our training sessions, as the last two involved running round in circles. This time we ventured through the West Sussex countryside; over fields, through mud, scarcely making it past some rather perplexed horses staring us down, and some friendly gentlemen in the middle of a shoot. We did get a little bit lost and at one stage thought we may have to ring the office and get picked up, but managed to somehow navigate our way back.

So we are well on our way to making it round the Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon before they start packing everything up…hopefully. Come back to keep up to date on our training adventures.

Lauren

Bucket loads of success for Wildwood PR

Horsham-based Public Relations agency, Wildwood PR enjoyed Silver Success for ‘Best Event’ at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Home Counties South PRide Awards on Friday 11th November 2011, at a lavish black tie event at the Brighton Hilton Metropole Hotel.

The agency, which specialises in providing PR services to local companies such as Ringway, Lifestyle Europe and ILG, as well as international clients such as Panasonic and lighting company Havells-Sylvania, was shortlisted in four categories, including Best use of Media Relations, Corporate Business Communications, Best Not-for-profit campaign and Best Event.

The PR team at Wildwood PR donned their best frocks and bow ties and headed down to the Brighton seafront to enjoy an evening of fine wine, food, speeches and awards. Although pipped to the post for the Gold award, the award-winning PR firm was rewarded ‘Silver’ in the ‘Best Event’ category for the Smart Home Awards for client CEDIA (the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association).

Quiz-masters!
On the party night itself, Wildwood PR romped home winning the ‘Precise Quiz’ of the night – the Wildwood PR team proved their unrivalled general knowledge skills across the South East PR industry when they scored 100% in the fun quiz – winning two bottles of champagne, which were duly enjoyed!

“The whole team had a superb evening and our Silver award for Best Event reflects all the hard work we put in to the CEDIA Awards,” comments Jeff Hayward, Wildwood PR’s Director. “It’s a great boost for everyone at Wildwood PR and proves the value of focus on generating a measurable return on investment for our clients. Not only that, but we had a great night out too!”

The CEDIA Awards celebrate excellence in the residential custom installation sector and draws upon entries in categories such as Best Home Cinema over £100,000 and Best Integrated Home over £250,000. The team at Wildwood PR managed all calls for entries as well as the PR, marketing and event management services. The event’s Gala Dinner night was hosted by actor Trevor Eve and took place at the prestigious One Mayfair in London’s exclusive West End.

Wildwood PR was founded and established in 1994 by Southwater businesswoman Tanya Houston and specialises in business-to-business and business-to-consumer campaigns. Wildwood PR currently boasts a diverse client list which also includes the British Institute of Interior Design, boiler manufacturer BDR Thermea, roof slates specialist Cembrit, control guru’s Crestron, Osmo, RIDI Lighting, Havells Sylvania and many more.