A Perfect 10: Holyrood PR Celebrate Awards Success

With the Shortlist for the CIPR’s 2017 PRide Awards announced our Edinburgh PR Agency is certainly not at sixes and sevens.

SURE you can settle for an eight or a nine, but at Holyrood PR we strive for perfection and ensure we achieve 10 out of 10 in everything we do.

It was a tense morning as the office collectively kept its finger on the refresh button to see if we had made the shortlist for CIPR’s 2017 PRide Awards – our version of the ‘Oscars’.

Thrilled, we soon discovered that all 10 entries we submitted made the shortlist. A perfect 10 for the team and our clients – and our strongest ever showing ahead of the big night.

Our shortlistings mirror the diverse range of clients and varied projects we work on. Here’s the rundown of the categories in which we’ll be competing:

Corporate and Business Communications Campaign – Scottish Business Resilience Centre: Establishing Scotland’s Cyber Champions
Consumer Relations Campaign – Mackie’s of Scotland: Mackie’s Churns 30 in Style
Community Relations Campaign – CALA Homes: Building Communities in East Lothian
Not-for-Profit Campaign – Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity: New Name, Same Aim
Low Budget Campaign – Scottish Schools Pipes and Drums Trust: Piping Up For Scotland
Best Use of Media Relations – Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity: New Name, Same Aim
Best Use of Social Media – Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity: New Name, Same Aim
Best Event – Scottish Business Resilience Centre: Scottish Cyber Awards
Outstanding Young Communicator – Stuart Milne ACIPR
Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy – Holyrood PR

We’ve had a busy year and the coverage to match, so in honour of our great clients we look back at the work that has made the shortlist.

Scottish Business Resilience Centre

Making up two of our award entries this year, we’ve worked with the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) since 2011. This means we’ve gained a wealth of knowledge when it comes to hacking, phishing and all things cyber.

We have completed numerous campaigns and shared dozens of stories for SBRC, all of which have showcased them as a pioneers and key commentator on the cyber landscape.

So when SBRC decided it was about time that Scotland had its own cyber awards we were on hand to help.

In the awards world, notoriety is everything and we were delighted to pack some serious punch with our wide-ranging and industry appropriate coverage.

The resulting campaign would reach more than 937,000 people on a tight budget.

Delivering these results for a long term client is something we love to do, getting involved in its latest work and challenges – unearthing its latest stories and telling them to the world.

Find out about the impressive results that we achieved for this to be award entry worthy – the hard work we put in to see SBRC light up the media with its inaugural Scottish Cyber Awards

Mackie’s of Scotland

When we found out Mackie’s was sponsoring country music festival, Doricana, in Aberdeenshire our team quickly put our thinking Stetsons on and thought of a creative way to boost the profile of the sponsorship.

The result was a perfect harmony of cows and country music, all we needed was a barn full of cows and a country musician.

Experimenting to see if Mackie’s cows liked country music (and so produce more milk) we kicked off a campaign that would be hugely successful

A particular highlight in the year of business-boosting coverage, headlines followed (a personal favourite is ‘Now That’s What I call Moosic!’) with the story appearing across multiple media platforms and creating a reach of over 3.5 million people.

Cows and country music, a match made in heaven? Read all about this creative campaign that delivered chart topping media coverage for the ice cream manufacturer

CALA Homes

When our client CALA Homes took the decision to launch a dedicated £10,000 community bursary for good causes and charitable groups in East Lothian, we were on hand to drive sign-ups and raise awareness.

With just one major regional news outlet now covering the area – the widely respected East Lothian Courier – we took the decision to work towards landing a full media partnership.

By successfully involving the paper, we landed a series of powerful articles that had an incredible effect. The bursary received 129 applications to innovative community project and CALA even had Editor, Robbie Scott, on the final selection panel.

Check out the great media coverage we secured on the community partnership between CALA Homes and the people of East Lothian

Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity

What’s in a name?

Your name is a key element of how you are recognised by the public, so when the Sick Kids Friends Foundation decided to rebrand to Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity it was our task to ensure widespread coverage and support for this exciting change.

When the new name was announced it hit the headlines and created an astounding 791,146 opportunities to see with coverage on STV, front page splashes and double page spreads in the Edinburgh Evening News, The Scotsman and Daily Record to name a few.

These impressive figures didn’t stop there, on a single day we created 253,646 impressions on Twitter and Facebook, 135 new page likes, 41 twibbon sign ups and trended on twitter.

This was a campaign the team are particularly proud of, not just for the great results but also for a great cause. We are so incredibly proud for the campaign to have achieved a hat trick of shortlistings in this year’s awards.

Read all about the pivotal move for the charity, the fantastic spread of media coverage and the impressive social stats we achieved for the new name

Scottish Schools Pipes and Drums Trust

The Scottish Schools Pipe and Drums Trust (SSPDT) is dedicated to promoting Scotland’s national instrument – the bagpipes – among young people. Every year the Trust holds its annual championship and we were tasked with drumming up more pipe bands to enter the competition and raise the profile of the Trust’s important work.

We created a targeted four month campaign that achieved a total of 134 items of media coverage.

Better yet the championships received a record number of entries and experienced a 50 per cent increase in the number of local authorities the Trust is now working with.

Seeing our work result in measurable figures for our clients really does make it all worth it.

We drummed up 6,118,599 opportunities to see for the 2017 Pipe Band Championship in our four month long campaign. Find out more on the great coverage on the championship here.