Well today Phase 1 of the controversial project has been given the green light by the government. Whilst many people are shouting from the roof tops about how fantastic this is, what exactly does it mean for Joe Bloggs and the region? Does it just mean that that weekend away to London can start 30 mins earlier? Far from it, infact the benefits to the West Midlands are rather significant.

• Will boost the West Midland’ economy by £2.5 billion
• Up to 10,000 new construction jobs
• Up to 2,000 operational and maintenance jobs
• £35.3 billion in economic benefit to the West Midlands region
• Up to 60 – 70,000 local jobs by 2040 as a result of relocation of jobs from other areas in the UK
• Reduced carbon of up to a million tonnes a year by 2055

*Source http://www.go-hs2.com/News/NewsListings.aspx

As with any argument though there are said to be some downsides to the development.

• The new HS2 trains will use x3 more power than traditional trains
• Will increase carbon emissions
• Benefits will mainly go to London; more people travelling to London than to other regions
• Will prove detrimental to small towns and villages along rail route

*Source http://stophs2.org/facts

What are your thoughts though? Will HS2 help uplift the economy or will it destroy our countryside?

PR agencies are now looking to go direct to the consumer, and so PR 2.0 was born. Although it may sound like some bizarre acronym, PR 2.0 is just the combination of traditional PR methods with social media and digital tools. The aim is still the same, to communicate with influencers and the consumer audience, it’s just the means that have changed.

The idea of PR 2.0 has been around for some years now, but following the recent boom in digital and social media technology, the PR industry has had to learn to evolve in order to stay ahead of the game, and inturn ensure clients are one step ahead of their competitors. More and more companies are using platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to interact with their markets, jumping traditional print formats completely. When articles are issued to papers now, all company names are hyperlinked and sometimes the releases contain video content. All of these tools enhance the user’s experience.

We’ve been utilising PR 2.0 at Big Cat Group for a number of years now. All of our press releases are supported by digital technology; it just depends on the nature of the client and their needs. We understand the importance of creativity. Just because something is text based doesn’t mean it can’t be engaging and be supported by additional content such as videos.

PR 2.0 isn’t a subject that is stationary. Every day a new website or social media platform is released and we make it our job to ensure our clients utilise them to their advantage. We do our research and we understand what works. Just because your competitor is on Myspace and Bebo doesn’t mean you have to be too. To stand out of the crowd you need to be different and that’s what we do best.

After months of grueling training in rain storms and heat waves and even signing up to a military fitness camp, the pair completed the course smashing their previous records.

The race wasn’t just about male ego though and seeing who could run the fastest. The pair pledged to raise money for The Prostate Cancer Charity, something which is close to both of their hearts.

Altogether they raised a total of £490.

A huge congratulations to Nick and Anthony for all their hard work. It must have paid off as we’ve seen them wearing suits which clearly haven’t been out of the wardrobe in sometime.

If you haven’t sponsored either of them yet, there’s still time. Just click the link below and enter your chosen amount

http://www.justgiving.com/anthonytattum

http://www.justgiving.com/nickbigcatmorgan

The whole country across all sectors has felt the pinch of the credit crunch. Many businesses have fallen at the wayside but others have come out fighting. After 11 years, Big Cat Group has seen one of its most successful years in 2011. Whereas many companies have had to unfortunately make staffing cuts, Big Cat has continued to grow, hiring new members of staff in its events, marketing and digital departments.

With more staff comes the possibility of a greater capacity for clients. All departments within Big Cat have seen a broad range of new clients come on board from a variety of sectors including hospitality, professional services, charity, government bodies and entertainment to name but a few. The clients themselves have again ranged vastly from the launch of Bournville College’s £66million campus, a Jamaican music festival, a Birmingham based auctioneer and a digital festival.

To coin the famous telecommunications tag line, the futures bright, the futures orange and here’s to another 11 truly fantastic years.

Happy Birthday Big Cat!!!!

Working alongside humanitarian charity, UNICEF, Dulex are offering people the chance to purchase a colour and donate money to charity. The average Smartphone can display 16.7 million colours, so if all of these colours were purchased for just £1, think of the difference this would make to the lives of those less fortunate.

Big Cat took up the challenge and purchased their highly symbolic shade of orange. When this blog was written, over £58,000 had already been donated since the launch of the campaign one week a go. What an amazing achievement this is for Dulex, not only for the lives they are helping to save, but also the running of a successful social media campaign.

There are so many companies launching campaigns at the moment which haven’t been thought through fully. The ‘Own a colour’ campaign is a perfect example how social media can not only raise brand awareness but also help the less fortunate.

Dulex is a household name in the UK. How many other paint suppliers can you think of off the top of your head? So surely this wasn’t just about raising brand awareness, there had to be a deeper meaning. By utilising their USP of the paint colour palette, Dulex have created a fantastic campaign which was spread like wildfire across Facebook and Twitter, every Digital Director’s dream. People can donate as little as a pound with every single penny helping.

Well done Dulex for this fantastic campaign.

Would social media and digital content really put the nail in the coffin of the good old press release though? Personally, I don’t think so. Agreed, press releases have had to become more advanced in delivering key messages by utilising hyperlinks and alt-tagged images; however from the conversations I’ve had with journalists they still prefer receiving and initial press release (as long as it’s relevant of course – but that’s a whole other blog).

This week I read in the CorpComms publication about how Japanese car manufacturer, Nissan utilise a rather extensive ‘Newsroom’ on their site which incorporates images, video, text, sound and social media sharing. If they have a story to tell, no matter what the format, it goes up on the Newsroom. The idea of this is to tell the story behind the brand rather than a monotonous release. If an article is considered ‘boring’ though, surely that’s down to the author and the topic?

Does the digital Newsroom remove the need for the old fashioned sell-in? Again, I don’t think so. Back in my freelance days, if a company wanted their good-news story telling I’d prefer that they send it me rather than me having to trawl through a site. Many of my journalist friends don’t have the time anymore to do indepth research unless it’s a ground-breaking story which is a real shame as this is where the real gems come out, but with how the industry is at the moment, time is incredibly precious.

Nissan’s editor-in-chief, Dan Sloan commented: “Nissan is not putting an end to traditional ways of promotion and advertising; it’s more a recognition that innovative messaging and delivery is the main objective, and on occasion cheaper than traditional methods.”

The Newsroom method does seem to work for international brands such as Nissan though, especially when a head office may be in the UK however the audience is in Japan for example.

The future of the press release still seems to be uncertain at the moment; however one thing is for sure, audiences are demanding more from their news via a variety of mediums and it’s our job to ensure they get what they want.

No, we haven’t been preparing for the annual Big Cat Summer BBQ but instead counting down the days to Jamaica Live, a 1-day festival extravaganza taking place at the heart of Birmingham in Victoria Square.

Organised by Punch Records, with Big Cat providing event and PR support, Jamaica Live was a celebration of Caribbean heritage and culture as part of the London Olympics 2012 Open Weekend. You may be wondering what exactly this had to do with the Olympics…well it’s a little known fact that the Jamaican Olympic team will be training in Birmingham over the coming year, so like any celebratory occasion we thought we’d throw a big party to celebrate.

On Saturday 23rd July, Birmingham’s Victoria Square was a hive of activity with the authentic sights, sounds and smells of Jamaican culture, with a range of activities taking place including traditional Caribbean cooking, drumming workshops, arts & crafts, storytelling, spoken word and dominoes. The Square also saw a large stage erected where the audience was treated to performances from Monique, the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra and Levi Roots who rustled up a storm on stage with his cooking demonstration.

Across the course of the day, over 32,000 people were said to have passed through Victoria Square, the majority of who stayed for the entire event. The Big Cat team had a fantastic day working the event and at the end of it all were proud to have been able to make the festival a reality. With so many budgets being cut at the moment, and funding incredibly scarce for projects such as this, it was fantastic to see so many people coming together, putting their differences aside and enjoying themselves. Some even learnt about a whole new culture, a rarety these days.

Once you have a strategy, it’s time to choose a network. It’s got to be Facebook, right? Not so fast. You might be about to make an almighty mistake. Just because Facebook is the biggest (some say notorious) social network of them all, that’s not to say your customers are interested in connecting with you there.

In fact, despite the meteoric rise in the number of business pages on Facebook, most of them are failing because either a) their owners are not producing compelling content b) their owners are not committed to engaging with their customers c) the platform wasn’t the right one in the first place. Ask yourself the following questions before you start.

Where is your audience?

It’s not enough to say: “everyone has a Facebook account”. This may well be true. But are people interested in liking your page? Probably not. They might like you out of kindness if you ask them. But what’s the point in that? If they’re not engaging with you. You need to take some time to listen. Where are your audience having conversations about your product/service/industry? Where do they hang out? Use Google Alerts/Social mention or the Twitter hashtag to find out. Then spend some time listening before you jump right in.

Is the functionality right?

Now you’ve identified where the conversations are happening, figure out whether the platform supports the content you want to share. If you’re a photography business, you’ll want to share a lot of pictures. So do your homework: where are your customers and think about how they’ll want to engage with your content.

Can you commit?

There’s an expectation with some networks that you regularly produce content. Twitter, for example, offers the opportunity to be almost limitless in the content – this requires somebody managing the conversations with some regularity, ideally a working day. If you can’t commit to social media, don’t do it.

How will you measure your activity/goals?

This is important. Especially when you’re justifying the investment to your seniors. You will have set out your goals way before you’ve chosen your platform, so make sure the platform supports your goal reporting. If your goal is to drive more traffic to the website, make sure you’ve setup your analytics to measure that. If you’re looking to engage customers consider how the customer rates the quality of the post (IE YouTube ratings, Facebook likes, Twitter retweets or LinkedIn comments).

Are you prepared for the haters?

Finally don’t forget that you will get problem customers taking pot shots at you on social networks. That’s fine. Really it is. If a customer has an issue with late delivery of a product or the level of service you’ve provided have a plan to deal with them. And make sure you deal with it publically where appropriate – this will do great things for your reputation in the long run.

Think inside the box

Often the question we get from our customers is “what do I say?” Don’t forget the solution may not be all about Twitter and Facebook – they might be just the broadcast platform for your content. The real conversations might well be happening on your blog. This is where you can share interesting and useful information about your business that feeds both the search engines but confirms you’re an expert in your field.

Pic by WebTreats

Attending the event was a great opportunity for me to listen to and engage with current issues and case studies surrounding social media within business, along with gaining the experience of live blogging and tweeting at an event as it unfolded. During the day individual blogs received up to 70 views, which was impressive as drive towards the site was driven by tweets generated at the conference using #smcc.

One of the first presentations was by David Noble from the TKGB titled: Things to make and do (on a mobile platform). Noble, firstly spoke on mobile applications; their growth, development and uptake on smart phones and the iPad along with how the industry is developing as a whole. Interactivity and communication was his key goal within his presentation and so he initiated group discussions through brainstorming sessions in order to create content for an app, which would be produced during the day.

Producing an app in a day (or ½ a day as it needs to be approved for sale before 2pm by iTunes), is something that I had not considered to be really possible as I imagined that there were a great many processes and stages involved, but it was produced and was available from the end of the conference for free download in the iTunes store (app name smcc).

This type of app building using the thoughts, opinions and discussion outcomes from a group at a conference such as this one, made for an exciting and usable output and something which I believe could be replicated for and at other events.

The app itself enabled the producers in this case to have a permanent record of ideas communicated and shared throughout the day (on social media), along with just being a super cool product to share with others who did not attend the conference.

Now that I know that’s its possible to build an app in a day I keep wondering; If I could build my own app, what would it be……. and if Big Cat was an app what would it look like?

Personally I’m not sure what all the fuss is all about. I’m not denying that there are certain videos that should be aired after the watershed, however surely it is the parent’s responsibility to monitor what their children are viewing, be it online or TV?

Living in a digital age should come with some precautions, and many applications do have systems in place to prevent underage children being subjected to adult content. Internet browsers have parental controls, you can lock TV channels off and gaming consoles even have timers on to limit time spent on them.

Many of these platforms run a substantial amount of advertising which is funded by these artists and as a result, I can’t see them stopping the broadcast of these videos anytime soon. Perhaps more of the videos may appear after the watershed but even still, children will find a way to watch them.

With the music industry already struggling, can it afford to take another hit?

Whose responsibility is it to monitor content? The artist, the Broadcaster, or the parent?

Not used to the manual labour that the Events team endure on a daily basis, Big Cat PR rolled up their sleeves, erected 30ft tepees, helped set up ramps and managed national, regional and broadcast media for this unique and rather extreme press day.

The aim of the day was to raise awareness of Extreme Freestylers, a motocross stunt event which is hitting the UK this July at Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. For the press day, we flew over World Champion, Nate Adams and UK Champion Chris Birch (as well as their bikes) to show the press how extreme this sport really is. Journalists took to the track on mini bikes following a masterclass from the experts and then bore witness to a jaw-dropping display from the riders on an articulated lorry which transformed into a ramp.

The day was a great success and fun was had by all. The coverage has already begun with a number of articles in the Independent, Daily Mirror and News of the World already being printed.

We’re all really excited about the UK tour date in July and can’t wait to see what’s in store for the crowd.

The day arrived and we all piled into cars, heading in a convoy to our destination. After an hour’s drive we arrived on a farm in the middle of no-where. It turns out we really were getting messy. Today’s adventure involved the Big Cat’s getting behind the wheel of various 4×4 and off road vehicles. The team building didn’t stop there though. The tasks involved us driving a reverse drive off-roader…whilst blind folded, extreme 4×4 through boggy marshland and tag team off-road buggying.

Despite all the mud and sludge we had a great day out which really helped develop our skills when working in teams, something that’s vital in our line of work.

A BIG thank you to Nick and Anthony who organised and paid for the trip!!

The event, which features a whole host of death-defying motorbike stunts, music and wholesome family entertainment, will be arriving at Cardiff Millennium Stadium on Saturday 2^nd July.

2011 will be the first time Extreme Freestylers has come to the UK and we’re hoping it won’t be the last. Having been a sell-out event in Australia, where it originated for a number of years now we have high hopes for this year’s event and are all really excited about working with some of the world’s champion stuntmen.

If you’re wondering why we’re all so hyped up about the event, check out the video below

Established in 1990, Birmingham Forward is an inclusive, independent, non-aligned corporate membership organisation which provides a platform through lobbying and events for its members to be clearly represented locally, regionally and nationally.

Following the success of Birmingham Forward, it was decided that a sister organisation was required to fulfil the unique needs of younger professionals, assisting them in their careers and developing talent to inspire and sustain business excellence. In 1993 Birmingham Future was established and since then has developed a membership base of over 500 individuals from across 21 sectors.

The award-winning Big Cat Group has been chosen to manage and implement a calendar of networking, lobbying and educational events for both Birmingham Forward and Birmingham Future. These events will range from the prestigious Chairman’s Gala Dinner, the highly attended AGM, debates, meet and mixes, seminars and various speed networking events.  A strategic and integrated marketing campaign will support the extensive events calendar.

Anthony Tattum, Managing Director of Big Cat Group said: “We are extremely proud to have been chosen to work with such outstanding organisations as Birmingham Forward and Birmingham Future.

“Big Cat Group has been a contributor to Birmingham Forward and Birmingham Future for a number of years with our CEO, Nick Morgan winning the entrepreneurial category in the nationally renowned Birmingham Young Professional of the Year as well as a number of our team sitting on the Events and Marketing committees.

“By utilising our expertise in marketing and event management, Big Cat Group will be able to provide a first class service, building upon the knowledge and connections that we have developed through our continual involvement in Birmingham Forward and Birmingham Future over the years.”

The campaign, which kicked off a few months ago involved Event Magazine searching for the top event companies in Europe, whether they are agencies, exhibitions, suppliers or a venue.  Big Cat faced some stiff competition this year, battling companies that have teams of 300 employees or more. Just goes to prove that quality will always beat quantity.

Everyone at Big Cat is proud to be working for the organisation whatever capacity they’re in. We have a laugh but also get the job done, surpassing client needs whatever the brief. It’s great to see outsiders recognising our admiration and determination to take Big Cat places. So what better way to be recognised than to be named one of the top event companies to work for the country?

Well done guys.