Media Mix: Smoking Gun’s outdoor joy; theEword wins; SKV
MANCHESTER’S Smoking Gun PR has been appointed by Mountain Hardwear, a subsidiary of US company Columbia Sportswear International, as its first-ever UK PR agency.
Mountain Hardwear, the second largest outdoors clothing company in the world, appointed Smoking Gun after a competitive three-way pitch.
The brand is gearing up for major UK expansion with the creation of a dedicated business team and the launch of a showroom in the Lake District.
Smoking Gun PR will handle all consumer public relations in the UK, working alongside the in-house team which handles trade and specialist media.
Mountain Hardwear’s European brand director, Andrew Barker, said: “Smoking Gun PR was the unanimous and clear winner in the pitch process. The clarity of the team’s approach combined with their clear passion for the sector and undoubted abilities made it an easy choice.”
Rick Guttridge, MD at Smoking Gun added: ““Winning the contract with Mountain Hardwear is a major coup for the business having beaten renowned London agencies.
“We’ve already had a fantastic induction into the Columbia family thanks to an intensive sales conference and product briefing in Oregon which has set us up to kickstart the campaign immediately.”
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SEARCH engine marketing firm theEword has been appointed to manage the the search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign for Renault Retail Group.
Renault, which runs 20 automotive dealerships, is relying on the Manchester agency to boost its search engine rankings for a variety of highly competitive motoring keywords.
The agency is also working with IT services provider Flexsys to look after its SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and is also running recruitment agency, Portfolio CBR’s PPC campaigns.
Al Mackin, CEO at theEword, said: “Our team is proud to be working with such respected businesses and the individuals behind them. December was our second record sales quarter in a row and on the performance to date, and our pipeline, Q1 2012 will be even busier.”
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SKV Communications has been appointed to handle consumer PR for Powerspin, a new hand held fitness device that tones and sculpts arms, shoulders, chest and stomach muscles.
Salford-based SKV has been hired by RPM Sports – which launched the successful Powerball exercise device in the UK – which has created Powerspin.
David Bloomberg at Powerspin said: “We were impressed by SKV’s enthusiasm for our product. We loved the ideas that were presented to us by the team at SKV and we are looking forward to seeing the results. It’s an exercise product that can be used at home by anyone of any age and it’s been snapped up by Argos, Tesco Direct and Amazon already. ”
SKV director Geraldine Vesey said, “We have developed a comprehensive multi platform communications strategy for Powerspin to ensure it gets talked about by the wide target market that it will appeal to.”
