As you may have already spotted this week in PR Week, we are delighted to have been selected by Appirio as their lead PR agency in the UK. Our task will be to raise brand awareness amongst those who shape IT purchasing decisions for large companies and position Appirio as a thought leader within the global services sector in the UK. Appirio is a global services provider that helps enterprises reimagine their business with cloud, social and mobile technologies.

Michelle Swan, vice president of communications and field marketing at Appirio says: “Appirio has spent the last two years building a presence and strong customer base in the UK market, and we’re excited to be working with 3 Monkeys Communications to help tell our story and how we’re helping customers power their business with the cloud. The 3 Monkeys team impressed us with their proven results and deep technology expertise, but their creativity and culture is what made them stand out as a perfect partner for us.”

Jasmin Athwal, Associate Director at 3 Monkeys says: “Appirio is a truly innovative company which works at the leading edge of the cloud computing sector. The brand is extremely well established in the US with many high profile clients and a rich heritage which will help Appirio become a leading voice within the sector in the UK and help drive the cloud computing revolution.”

Great news for a Friday – have a good weekend all!

Jasmin Athwal, Associate Director

As a doctor, one of the things I love about medicine is that nothing ever is quite what it seems. Maybe it makes the science more challenging – the practice of medicine was ever an art, magic even; or perhaps I’m selfishly reassured that without certainties the role of the doctor can never be replaced by computerised smart systems that follow hidden algorithms to reach their diagnosis.

Take the menopause for example or childhood fevers. For donkey’s years, the menopause and the need for Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) was inexorably linked; and aspirin was spooned out to children with a fever ever since early man discovered it’s precursor in willow bark. Then out of the blue came studies that showed, much to everyone’s consternation, the use of both are actually riskier than doing nothing at all. No woman can get HRT routinely any longer and aspirin for the under-12s is banned.

But decisions have to be made; certainties have to be created, and it’s here that doctors’ desire for proof and the need for better public protection really come to the fore.

You would have thought that introducing laws to ensure cyclists wear a helmet to prevent head injuries would be a ‘no brainer’ (excuse the pun)? Like for seat belts and road traffic injuries many have lobbied long and hard to introduce laws that would require the equivalent of the cyclist ‘buckling up’ each time they sat on the saddle.  But new research in the BMJ this week suggests that any potential legislation to make wearing bicycle helmets compulsory would have minimal impact on admissions to hospital for head injuries.

Whist the authors say that helmet use should be encouraged, legislation – in addition to current safety campaigns – would have no great effect.

The researchers from Canada found that between 1994 and 2008, there were 66,716 hospital admissions for cycling related injuries, 30% of which were head injuries. During this period there was a substantial fall in the rate of hospital admissions for cycling head injuries and reductions were greatest in areas that had helmet legislation in place. Whilst there was a decrease in hospital admissions, researchers point out that admissions were falling before the research was commissioned and before helmet legislation was enforced. Based on this factor, the researchers concluded that helmet legislation did not necessarily reduce head injuries.

You can read the research here.

Is this the science of the absurd or should it steer us away from legislation? You may scratch your head, but despite the solid science of this cycling study, I fervently hope it does not prove a set-back for legal protection for all cyclists’ craniums in the UK.

Dr. Martin Godfrey, Managing Director, H+W

Last night we were delighted to win the ‘Experiential & Events’ category at the Marketing Week Engage awards for our M Savers campaign with Morrisons. This was a wonderful team effort between Morrison’s in-house PR team, the 3 Monkeys Morrisons PR team and live media agency, Closer.

The M Savers campaign was a truly integrated offering, led by insightful and timely research into families financial concerns for the summer of 2012. The team highlighted the plight that many families faced in the summer of 2012 – feeding and entertaining their children in the face of the worst UK recession since the 1930’s. Based on this insight, the experiential element brought the campaign to life, helping to position Morrisons as “Mums helper”. The team created 10 pop-up play parks positioned at key Morrisons target audience locations that offered free play and cooking advice for parents in need of help and guidance in the tricky summer months.

If you would like to see the campaign in all its glory and take a look at the fantastic results the campaign generated, please take a look at the campaign highlights video below.

Anna Speight, Director, Consumer & Brand

As we all know, the hunt for a means to establish social business models – and to measure clear and direct return on social content – preoccupies many marketers who are looking to invest in the space.

At least some prayers may now have been answered in the form of YouTube’s “Shoppable” videos – which enable consumers to shop whilst watching a video by clicking on, say, a lipstick, a pair of shoes, or a jumper and being able to research the product and its availability and make a purchase if they wish.

Such functionality has been around for at least a year, but the absence of a large-scale, proprietary social solution has, until now, largely led brands to partner with third-party technology providers to allow viewer interactions.
But now, with YouTube tightly under its belt, Google is releasing a “channel gadget” that brings some of that functionality straight to the video channel.

Says Google:

“The new channel gadget will enable shoppers to seamlessly move from browsing videos to finding which retailers carry the products, checking availability, comparing prices and making a purchase, streamlining the user experience.”

Google states that the new gadget will first be made available as a “premium offering” to its major FMCG clients, with a broader roll-out to be confirmed.

We believe that this development will break down barriers between (say) celebrity glamour and high-street consumer fashion, by enabling users to purchase items directly within – and as a result of – the ‘influencing’ editorial content. By rolling this out to a broader audience and potentially more platforms, it may even challenge more traditional methods of advertising and reinvent the way brands promote products and consumers purchase them.

Next stop, shoppable TVs!

Elise Pearce, Digital Consultant

elise.pearce@3-monkeys.co.uk 

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last couple of weeks you could not have failed to notice the huge buzz around the impending arrival of Google Glass. Its arrival in 2013 is set to signal the influx of wearable technology in a huge way – with smart watches, wristbands and intelligent clothing all linking with our human self to connect us with our friends and colleagues like never before.

You’ll no doubt already be using some form of smart app on your mobile device to measure your weekly run, but the smartphone is merely a staging point in the wearable tech phenomenon. Recently launched products such as Nike+ Fuelband and Jawbone UP take this a step further by measuring your daily activity, heartrate, sleeping patterns and diet, to help us better understand our inner self and bring the ‘gamification’ element to our lifestyle. We’ll also soon see hands-free wearable cameras, such as the Autographer from OMG Life, hit the market that will bring the term ‘lifelogging’ into the fore, enabling us to visually map together key moments from our day in a matter of seconds.

For a tech geek like myself, this is hugely exciting (I can’t wait to get my hands on the new Pebble e-paper watch!), and even better is that we have a client that shares this passion for tomorrow’s technology. We’re working with cloud hosting provider Rackspace and the Centre for Creative and Social Technologies (CAST) at Goldsmiths, University of London, on an exciting project to explore the impact of wearable tech on everyday life from wellbeing, education, security, productivity, and lifestyle. Chris Brauer, who is leading the project, talks about the issues in more detail in this week’s CityAM.

We’ll be announcing the results in the next few weeks, so watch this space. In the meantime, if you want to keep up with the Google Glass hype, check out Robert Scoble’s blog here and follow him on @Scobleizer – he can’t get enough of them!

Adam Clatworthy, Account Director

Two pieces of big news for doctors and patients this week.  First, new rules designed to speed up and simplify the process of assessing bad doctors were implemented on Wednesday. They are a welcome part of the on-going process put in motion as a result of the Shipman Inquiry – the unassuming general practitioner who turned out to be one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history (250 dead and probably more undetected).

Now, doctors with claims brought against them either by their patients or colleagues can be assessed in a new and simplified procedure that promises a faster, fairer and more satisfactory resolution of problems. Something we should all, doctors and the public alike, gratefully exhale in unison about.

But for those outside the medical profession, its really not been clear how fundamentally the Shipman debacle has shaken what was previously a complacent and often self-serving system. In the past a small minority of poor doctors, could merrily plough their own incision across all and sundry without any great fear of detection. I can remember as a young doctor, hearing stories too awful to describe here. One consultant surgeon I vividly recall having to ask his colleagues to release his fingers from a high powered orthopedic drill because his well-developed neurological condition would not allow him to let go his grip of the trigger. He was removing someone’s hip joint.

So from the 1^st of January this year, every doctor in the country has had to begin what’s termed ‘Revalidation’; a rolling process of assessment that will take 5 years to scrutinize every doctor in the country to ensure they are fit to practice.

And so we come to the second major piece of news this week…I just passed! (waves his arms in the air hysterically). And for any of my ex-patients reading this – I deny everything and will see you at the GMC’s new Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) next week.

Martin Godfrey, Managing Director, Health + Wellness

As well as offering our PR and communications support to our new Health + Wellness client Shooting Star CHASE, we’ll also be getting our hands dirty to help them raise money by competing in the Nuts Challenge.

The Nuts Adventure Race is on Saturday August 31^st  and is one of the most challenging military assault courses in the world. Owned and run by ex-parachute regiment soldiers who take part in various challenges around the world, it will of course be an absolute doddle for our crack-team of Monkeys…….eek.

Say hello to the 3 Monkeys Communications team below….

(Laura Gordon, Adam Clatworthy, Mandy Johnson, John McCauley & Sophie Mansfield)

If you would like to give a donation to support our work with Shooting Star CHASE, please visit our donation page. 

Thanks in advance everyone!

John McCauley, Senior Marketing Consultant

We’re really chuffed about two new client wins this week – Trend Micro and Shooting Star CHASE.

Trend Micro, a market leader in cloud security, has chosen 3 Monkeys to handle corporate and enterprise PR in the UK, boosting our technology portfolio that already includes brilliant brands like Rackspace, Xirrus and Getronics.

Our team has been tasked to raise Trend’s profile and reputation in the UK and shift perceptions away from being seen as just an anti-virus security brand. We will also be responsible for creating integrated business campaigns for the UK and other European markets and marking the company’s 25th anniversary.

Chris Hayward, Marketing Director for EMEA at Trend Micro commented: “Trend’s business is constantly evolving to meet our customers’ needs of keeping their information secure in an era of increased mobility, social media, cloud computing and sophisticated targeted online criminal activity. We wanted an agency which could evolve with us and had a proven track record of delivering creative campaigns with a blended approach to social and PR.”

Our second win this week is also our first win for our recently launched Health + Wellness practice, so we are doubly excited to welcome Shooting Star CHASE to the agency. Shooting Star CHASE will join existing client Novartis on the Health + Wellness portfolio.

Our brief with Shooting Star CHASE is to help position the charity as a global centre of excellence in palliative care for children and elevate awareness to help secure the £23,000 of funding required each day for the charity to operate.

Juliette Gillard, Head of Communications & Marketing at Shooting Star CHASE commented: “We are thrilled to be working with 3 Monkeys.  Children’s hospice care can have many misconceptions and we are keen to start building awareness and understanding of the vital work we do.”

Christine Jewell, Managing Director

The fine line that exists between a drug and food was underlined for me this week by an article in that illustrious on-line fount of all things cardiovascular, Heart.org.

Researchers at Barts and the London medical school have shown that the humble beetroot contains a chemical (a nitrite) that, when coming into contact with saliva in the mouth, is converted into nitrate – a potent dilator of blood vessels. It turns out that a glass of beetroot juice will bring down a person’s blood pressure quite considerably, particularly if it is already abnormally high. This holds out the promise that maybe people with mildly raised BP might be able to take a glass of the red stuff either in addition to or even instead of blood pressure lowering pills.

Lead researcher Dr Amrita Ahluwalia says that while we all know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for the cardiovascular system, exactly why this is the case is not certain. Studies have shown that of all the different fruit and vegetables out there it is the green leafy ones that provide the greatest protection against heart attacks and strokes. What is true about these vegetables is that they represent the major source of nitrate in our diet.

3 Monkeys has long identified the growing momentum behind  nutraceuticals/functional foods and food supplements as a crucial trend in disease management today. Many natural substances can clearly be used to safely treat conditions that otherwise need drugs which have significant side effects.

This was underlined this week in comments made by a leading European regulator.  Speaking at a recent congress in Brussels, Dr Vittorio Silano, a former European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) committee chair called for the European Commission and member states to work with the EFSA and European Medicines Agency to rethink the way biological products are assessed for efficacy and safety in the treatment of disease.

Dr. Martin Godfrey

Managing Director, Health + Wellness

During our latest Breakfast Club featuring the Fleet Street Fox, Susie Boniface (for it is she) commented on her social community being a better response mechanism to queries than a search engine, which got me thinking…

As we become ever more connected online with people who share interests, opinions and passions, we are each building a bespoke knowledge hub, a valuable resource of feedback to our questions and queries. Long the staple term for any search engine, the results we are given are only as relevant as the query we offer, but search engines don’t know us as individuals, they don’t understand our etymology – at least not like people do.

The detached nature of Twitter in particular allows others to be more candid than they might be face-to-face, giving real opinions based not only on your query, but also on whom they know you to be. I’m sure we’ve all asked our followers a simple enough question and had a great set of responses: “Where shall I go for dinner tonight, I need room for 6 people?” or even more the subjective “I’ve read some varied reviews for XYZ on websites, have any of you given it a go?”.  So not only can we draw on the purely black and white recommendations, but also tie in opinions simultaneously.

Whilst the major search engines battle to truly integrate social intelligence into their user-experience and Facebook looks to roll-out social graph search, is it possible that we, as the ‘connected’ generation, already have 90% of the online qualified feedback we need through our own digital connections?

Felix Hemsley, Digital Account Director