Section 66(1) Companies Act 2006 states;

“a company must not be registered under this Act by any name that is the same as another name appearing in the registrar’s index of company names”

In addition to this, it is possible for existing companies to challenge the use of similar names via the common law action; ‘Passing off’. This action prevents new companies from taking advantage of the success and reputation of existing companies, as demonstrated in the case; Reckitt and Colman Products Ltd v. Borden Inc. and others[1990], after Borden launched an identically named brand.  Many of you, like me, may have accidentally typed in hoogle.com or facenook.com for instance, and noticed that the domain name was in use by an imitation website.

The ongoing dispute between Sky and Skype demonstrates how important the name of a company can be an what implications it may have. British Sky Broadcasting is trying to prevent the internet communication service Skype from registering its logo in several territories because it is concerned the two brands will be confused. Such disputes are proof that similar names have a big effect on business.

It is common for brands to try to take advantage of the success of another company and this strategy isn’t unique to company names. The launch of Marks and Spencer’s new vitamin water has been received with heavy criticism due to the products similarity to Glaceau’s Vitamin water. The product is identical in design and shape with only a slight variation in name. Such a “copy cat” approach is usually only adopted by those with limited resources or a lack of creative thought. We will be following these disputes with close attention and will update you when they are resolved.

So, I requested that each candidate to make it through to round two of interviews would take away a live brief and pitch their concepts back to me. There have been some negative comments regarding pitches in the recent press, but all of the candidates seemed happy to be able to showcase their skills in something as relevant as an existing Big Cat client.

One candidate was Justin Price, who ‘hounded’ me with dog themed ‘Lost’ mailers and e-shots in the hope that Big Cat would give him a chance. Justin’s work was thoughtful, creative, occasionally light-hearted, and I was impressed with his determination in his self-promotion, and so I decided to put him through.

The brief I put to the candidates was to create the next quarterly advertising campaign for RoSPA, a leading Health and Safety organisation based in the midlands. An arguably difficult subject and a very loose brief was thrown at the creatives, with a deadline of three days.

On the day of the presentations, we were excited to see what would come back, then Justin presented, and he had delivered!

A week or so later, we offered him the role, and forwarded the concepts to the client, as they were, we weren’t surprised that the client loved them, and didn’t want to change a thing.

Below are some examples of the new RoSPA speech bubbles campaign using on the mark copy lines, also created by Justin to complement the design.

Once the position was offered, Justin followed up by sending a ‘found’ poster, and very generously donated £250.00 to Birmingham dog’s home to end the campaign. Since them, Justin’s appointment has been covered in The Drum, Creative Boom, Event Magazine, Birmingham Post, and the Express and Star. Well done and welcome to the team, Justin!

In 2,650 BCE, it took approximately 100,000 workers approximately 20 years to construct the Great Pyramid of Giza. This was achieved with technology far inferior to that used by the engineers of the new Wembley stadium (which took about as long to complete!)

In 1966 a team of eleven came together to bring football home to England and just yesterday, 388 brave bidders exercised true teamwork to get a delicious 3 course meal discounted on the deal-of-the-day website Groupon.

Groupon is one of many sites where consumers can band together to get price reductions on items which might otherwise have been out of their price range.  Such sites are beneficiaries of the recession and a new discount site is being launched every week.

Another internet platform which illustrates the strength in consumer numbers is www.pledgemusic.com. Here an artist can make promises in exchange for the funds needed to create a new album or to pay for a headline tour.

Here –  http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/charliesimpson for example, fans can pay £10 to have their name mentioned in Charlie Simpson’s album booklet. £2000 will buy a private gig!

With more and more artists latching on to this method of fundraising, and with deal websites continually attracting new business partners, it appears that many of these sites will be here long after the recovery.

One final example of a team who achieve great things:

Team Big Cat

Despite this, the Conservative’s outdoor campaign was the one of the most memorable aspects of this year’s general election. ‘Bigot-gate’ scandal aside, of course!  The conservatives spent a giant £5.2m on outdoor posters, while the other major parties decided not to focus on outdoor campaigns.  Alistair Campbell initially labelled the Tories campaign as ‘old fashioned’ and highlighted the role of social media as one the primary forums to drive Labours ‘modern’ campaign.

Alistair Darling also commented that … “public resistance to heavy messaging has grown, and for politics in particular there is no guarantee that the rewards of a well-funded, well-crafted and well-executed ad concept will outweigh the risks.” This is a well founded statement as the conservative posters featuring David Cameron received wide-scale criticism, with many expressing that too much focus was on him as a person rather than his policies. In response, the Tories changed tactics and decided to use an image of Gordon Brown alongside a negative statement. This also received heavy criticism –much of which suggested that the Tories were focussing heavily on the pitfalls of the opposition in order to disguise their own shortcomings.

However, the poster campaign could only have received this criticism if people were interacting with the adverts and this is the proof that, with the right message, outdoor is media format-force to be reckoned with. The decline in print options has raised the influence of outdoor advertising.

The Big Cat Group understands that this is the case – and therefore , outdoor features so prominently in our mutli-channel media campaigns. Here are a few examples:

Bodies Revealed

CSI Experience

Leader, unique, great….we’re all guilty of using these buzzwords in press releases, news articles and other promotional material but it seems that so are the rest of the world’s PRO’s. Earlier this year PR strategist Adam Sherk undertook a study of the most overused words in press releases. The results are pretty damming, especially when you look down the list and spot the odd word that you use in your own releases (usually on clients request albeit). Adam created a list of the top 100 overused words however as that’s a few too many here’s a list of the top 10 perpetrators instead/

What is the reason for the overuse of these words though? Have PRO’s become lazy and stuck in a rut, churning out the same old phrases over and over again or is it the clients fault? Are they that driven to have their keywords in a press release that it makes all future releases look the same?

Personally I think it’s a bit of both. In the short time I have been in the industry I’ve been guilty of using the words ‘Leading’ ‘innovative’ and ‘unique’ but can anyone honestly say they haven’t? Of course everyone thinks their product/service is unique. Would people really buy a product if it had no USP? Most likely not.

Note to self – must use new words in press releases

Social media appears to be everywhere, with the likes of Facebook and Twitter regularly making the headlines in news broadcasts all over the world. With this burst of online communities and networks, businesses have begun to look at ways of using it for contacting consumers. So seemingly PR and social media would fit hand in hand as if almost made for each other.

Social Media is being used so much now, to the point of becoming a new form of live coverage, following major events worldwide from the 2010 World Cup finals to the UK election debates not to mention press conferences and pretty much practically anything and everything else. But what are the best ways for PR to tap into social media effectively?

Importantly sites like Twitter and Facebook should not be used for invading clients or customers personal space, or used in a poor and lazy attempt to simply pour out endless streams of what can only be described as ‘spam’. This will only reflect negatively to the targeted audience.

They should be used for interacting with clients and their target networks, advising, commenting and conversing with people around common and business interests. One impressive strategy is making your company more personal by giving their social media a personality of its own through an employee, which leads nicely into resolving complaints in the public domain quickly and efficiently. Virgin and PayPal are just two examples who manage this very efficiently.

Being able to create a relationship with your targeted network is exactly what PR using social media is all about. Of course it lends its hand to showing off your latest bit of coverage or new account wins, but really if you can utilise it to network and build relationships and create a positive rapport then PR fits perfectly with social media.

Social media is still relatively new and with the speed technologies are developing at the moment and instant access to the internet we have available it’s hard to stop and think before the next strategy needs be devised. But as long as you keep on communicating with your networks and stay up to date with the latest talking points you’re on the right track.

Big Cat Group and AMP Entertainment have joined forces to launch a new European live entertainment consultancy, Big Cat Europe. The new entity will have operations in Barcelona, Birmingham, London and Paris and will be delivering projects across Europe.

The pan-European consultancy will offer services including booking and marketing services for a broad range of international touring exhibitions and family shows. The new firm will offer complete tour support drawing on the operational and marketing capacities of Big Cat and utilising the extended international reach of AMP.

The company recently handled the negotiation and set-up of the European premiere of “Star Trek: The Exploration” exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Science in Valencia, Spain. The exhibition opened on 22^nd July and will run until February 2011.

Established in 2000, Big Cat Group is a full-service agency incorporating PR, marketing, events and creative design functions.  AMP’s working relationship with Big Cat has grown through collaborations on the UK debuts of the exhibitions “Bodies Revealed” in October 2009 and “CSI: The Experience” in March 2010. In addition to carrying out the communications and marketing plans, Big Cat handled the setup logistics and on-site management of both exhibitions.

As part of the deal AMP France and AMP Spain will become Big Cat France and Big Cat Spain.  The businesses will continue to offer their core sports, entertainment and experiential marketing services, and will also be expanding their service offer to include creative design, advertising, public relations and event management in France and Spain. 

Both AMP and Big Cat see important synergies to be reaped from this merging of forces. Mike Molloy, Founder of AMP now named Managing Director of Big Cat Europe said: “We are looking forward to announcing new clients and projects in the coming months.  I will be working with Nick Morgan, CEO of Big Cat Group, to integrate the teams of the two companies to make these new projects a reality.”

Nick Morgan added: “Big Cat Europe will fill a specific niche in the European market that links major international content developers with promoters and venues. The new business will fully utilise the skills and resources of Big Cat and AMP which offer a range of complimentary services.”

There are obviously many benefits in using a celebrity to endorse your product. The brand will instantly be associated with the celebrity and will, in turn, be accepted in the same manner that the celebrity is. The brand will become more easily recognisable and will, in most cases, achieve longevity in the mind of the consumer.

This is certainly the case in sport.  For example, fans will religiously imitate David Beckham and this makes him the perfect vehicle to drive the sales of the latest Adidas boots. However, brand-celebrity associations are a double edged sword, as demonstrated by the relationship between Nike and Tiger Woods. After the exposure of his private life, Nike decided not to drop Tiger- a decision which runs the risk of making it seem that Nike condone his behaviour.

Anyway, I’m off to follow some people on Twitter…  in order to make celebrities out of them!

The threat of offending people has made it increasingly difficult for advertisers to leave viewers in shock and awe. Despite this however, many banned adverts, especially those from well known brands, continue to rack up views on video site such as Youtube. Once banned, the adverts spreads like viral wild fire and since they get sent to people by friends via Facebook or e-mails, viewers are more likely to respond to them. In fact, many brands can thank the ASA for a larger ROI than any paid slot could ever have provided.

VW – Don’t Forget It’s a Diesel.

This VW advertisement was banned as a result of its frequent use of expletives.  It is difficult to believe that VW’S advertising agency ever believed the advert was fit for TV screens. It is more likely that the adverts banning was a result of fine planning – an approach which provoked over 2 million views on Youtube.

Click to play:

This isn’t the only time VW have had an advert banned for being controversial. Any guesses as to why this one got banned?

Polo – Small but Tough

Click to play

The build of the exhibition took 2 weeks during which Big Cat worked along side the venue’s in-house crew (muchas gracias) and Victory Hill Entertainment who designed the show.  Long hours and hard work paid off as the finished show looks amazing.

You can check out photos of the build and completed show as well as a daily video diary here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigcatevents/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixyBIHHoc-s

http://www.cac.es/prensa/noticia/?contentId=115554

After recently completing a degree in Theatre, performance and Event Design at Birmingham City University, I began scouting around online for event companies that could offer me an internship. With my aspirations in mind, I contacted The Custard Factory Events team enquiring about possible work placement opportunities. I have always loved The Custard Factory and it has been an ambition of mine to work at events there. Within a week, I had an interview at Big Cat, quit my part time job, worked at my first event and began my 3 month internship as an Event Executive. Fortunately, my course prepared me for the fast pace of the events industry so this was all second nature to me. I have thoroughly enjoyed my first week in the company of all the lovely staff at Big Cat and am quickly learning the roles and responsibilities of a member of the events team. I look forward to my first wedding next week at The Old Library and to many more exciting events in the future.

Birmingham based full service agency Big Cat Group has been recruited by government regeneration agency Urban Living in partnership with Arts Council England to help promote their Beyond Bricks community arts campaign.

Beyond Bricks focuses on engaging creatively with local people and restoring community pride in neighbourhoods within the Urban Living catchment area.* as part of an ambitious regeneration programme which aims to improve housing and living conditions for thousands of people. The scheme is one of a number of projects which Urban Living has established in order to increase community cohesion within the area.

Big Cat will support the campaign by handling the PR for a number of artistic projects and workshops taking place over the next four month which are being managed by community arts organisation Multistory. Activities range from creating a local magazine to erecting community statues, allowing residents to work together and celebrate their community.

Anthony Tattum, Managing Director, says: “We are thrilled to be working on such an important project for the communities of Birmingham. The Beyond Bricks campaign has a community spirited message with the aim to bring people together. We are excited about being involved in such a worthwhile venture.”

Tess Randles, Urban Living’s PR and Communications Manager, adds:”We wanted to ensure that the Beyond Bricks campaign would really get noticed and engender the kind of pride and involvement that makes a tangible difference. This is why we brought Big Cat in and the signs are that the campaign is already getting noticed.” 

I-Robot 2004

The new rules, which are due to be incorporated into UK law at the end of 2010,will allow product placement in TV series, films, entertainment and sports programmes, but not in children’s and news programmes. So to reassure those of you who are concerned – Bob the Builder will not be fixing things with a Black & Decker multi-purpose saw. What we might expect to see however, is a Carlsberg tap at the Rovers Return or even Clear Blue pregnancy tests on Jeremy Kyle.  This will provide a new channel for advertising so maybe now it’s time to think inside of the box (for a change).

Needless to say, both Big Cat and RoSPA were very impressed with the outcome. Check it out:

Final Advert