LONDON — Lansons has been appointed by the National Lottery Promotions Unit on a two-year contract to drive awareness of the National Lottery Open Week, which was started in 2017 to thank lottery players for the £30 million raised each week for good causes. As part of the week, National Lottery-funded venues and organisations – including sport, heritage, arts and film – offer free entry or special offers to those who present a National Lottery ticket.

LONDON — Global independent marketing and communications agency Finn Partners has been appointed by Visit Jersey to lead its PR and communications in the UK after a competitive pitch. The agency is tasked with promoting the Channel Island as a staycation and short haul destination for UK travellers, via creative storytelling, thought leadership and proactive and reactive communications to grow brand awareness among UK travellers.

LONDON — Men’s clothing brand Charles Tyrwhitt (pictured) has chosen Boldspace’s proprietary data and analytics platform BoldLens, a data and analytics platform that tracks all brand communications activity across PR, advertising and marketing against a range of commercial KPIs – including sales revenue, traffic, engagement, organic branded search, press coverage, social mentions, and sentiment – in real-time. The agency will help the brand track all brand activity in one platform. The platform will also track other areas such as share of voice, out-of-home (OOH) advertising effectiveness, brand awareness and consideration against competitors.

LONDON — Frozen meal brand ByRuby has hired Wild Card as its retained PR agency as it launches nationally with a listing with supermarket chain Waitrose. The agency’s brief is to support ByRuby's growth in grocery retail.

LONDON — Creative and digital agency Media Zoo, backed by growth capital investor BGF, has acquired digital agency Finer Vision. The two agencies already work together; Finer Vision adds AR, VR and web3 communications experience to Media Zoo’s offering. Media Zoo is targeting further acquisitions in the digital learning sector.

LONDON — The Public Relations and Communications Association’s (PRCA) Innovation Forum has published a new paper, ‘Data Literacy in Public Relations’, to elevate understanding of best practice in the use of data in public relations. The 11 essays from practitioners explore how data informs strategy, decision making, creativity, execution and measurement. The paper explains how insights can be developed from data and used as a foundation for content and storytelling. Themes include: the numbers that matter in public relations, designing a listening and measurement strategy, identifying a public and listening to conversations, the possibilities and limitations that tools present, translating data into insights, building a culture of digital literacy, and data storytelling and visualisation.

DUBAI — The winners of the PRCA MENA Digital Awards were announced last week, with TishTash Communications & Weber Shandwick MENAT named as digital team of the year. Other winners included APCO Worldwide, Gambit Communications, Cicero & Bernay and Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority. The awards sponsors were 3Gem, Carma, Guinness World Records, ICCO, PRovoke Media, Tanween, Weber Shandwick and YouGov.

LONDON — Rooster’s travel team has had three new client wins: airline Air Astana was launched 20 years ago as a partnership between the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and BAE Systems; Cheval Collection specialises in luxury serviced apartments worldwide; and Ambassador Cruise Line is the first British cruise line to be launched since 2010, offering no-fly cruises to the UK market.

LONDON — The Jargon Group has acquired Pelican Communications, a 12-strong agency based in Manchester specialising in sustainability and ESG-focused integrated communications campaigns. Pelican’s client portfolio includes The British Frozen Food Federation, Ylem Energy and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. The Jargon Group includes B2B-focussed Jargon PR and processing, packaging and industrial automation specialist GloHouse Media. 

ABERDEEN — Scottish strategic communications firm Aspect has completed the acquisition of Aberdeen-based digital consultancy Web Integrations for a six-figure sum. The acquisition will strengthen Aspect’s core proposition with the addition of in-house digital consultancy, digital marketing, website design and development and SEO expertise, to meet growing demand from clients. Ewan Duthie, formerly MD of Web Integrations, has been appointed digital director at Aspect and joins the company’s leadership team alongside Andrew and Yvonne McCallum.

LONDON — Food waste disposers and instant hot water tap manufacturer InSinkErator has appointed search-first communications agency Rise at Seven, on a UK brief including digital strategy, social media and influencer campaigns, SEO consultancy and digital PR. The firm’s products feature in UK major kitchen showrooms including Wren Kitchens, B&Q and Magnet Kitchens, who are also on Rise at Seven’s client list. It is the agency’s first client win since launching its digital strategy team headed by executive strategy director Kristal Ireland.

LONDON — Consumer intelligence platform Talkwalker has announced the implementation of large language models within its consumer intelligence platform, believed to be an industry first. Large language models learn the relationships between words and phrases which can be used to predict and generate new text, translate between languages and perform other natural language processing tasks, such as answering questions, classification or summarisation. The innovation can categorise relevant social conversations and capture the essence of thousands of customer support emails, reviews and CSAT surveys to draw actionable insights in real time.