Sony Ericsson joins the Wolfstar client list

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Whoever said August is meant to be quiet? At Wolfstar we’ve never been busier with lots of activity on for existing clients and an exciting new one to announce.

Some of you have probably already seen the news (thanks to those of you who’ve emailed and tweeted) that we’re now working with Sony Ericsson. Initially our brief is working with the Global Communications and Public Relations team to help develop a social media strategy. But very soon you’ll be seeing the first results of our work.

There are lots of great things about this client, not only is it a great brand to work for, but more importantly that it’s a global brief looking at social media in a range of different markets, not just the UK.

XP: A PR Guy’s Musings blog

Wolfstar wants account directors, account managers and account executives

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a public relations and social media star then Wolfstar wants to hear from you. We’re recruiting at every level in order to service recent client wins and staff up for new business in the pipeline.

If you can tick at least some of these boxes we want to know, if you can tick them all then we definitely want to know more:

• Passionate interest in social media, social networking, web 2.0, word of mouth marketing and all things online
• ‘Traditional’ public relations experience – it might be just having graduated from a PR degree course or you might have spent ten years at the coal face of a PR agency or in-house communications post
• Be a great writer – PR might be moving on, but writing is still a core skill and you’ve got to be good
• Be fun – you have to want to enjoy your job, you do it because it’s your passion, your career and your future – not just a wage
• But we do serious stuff for our clients – you’ve got to be committed to helping us to deliver a real return on investment for everything we do
• Geography isn’t a deal breaker – our head office is in Leeds, but if that’s not for you then we still want to talk

If you’re interested then drop me an email. Ideally I’d like a PDF of your CV/resume, but if you don’t have an up to date one then don’t worry as you could just point me to your LinkedIn profile.

And hello to Sam Oakley

I’m also delighted to be able to announce that PR and political blogger Sam Oakley is joining Wolfstar as an account manager.

Sam is a great new addition to the team and is the author of the lively All About PR blog. I’ll let Sam introduce himself, but I also want to let you in to the not so secret fact that Sam is an enthusiastic Conservative activist so will provide a good foil to my Labour activism.

One thing you find is that people who are passionate about public service and politics usually have more in common that they do differences. We’ve both already tried to convince Beth about the wonders of West Wing, but she’s refusing to be lured away from the Jack Bauer fan club in 24.

We’’ll be telling you a little bit more about what Sam is going to be doing shortly.

Au revoir, Arrivederci, Auf Wiedersehen, Do pobachennya, Ma as-salaamah Sebastian

Our account manager Sebastian Mysko has been with Wolfstar since our very first day, so it is with immense sadness that I announce he has departed for pastures new. But it’s also with great joy and pleasure because Seb has landed an absolutely fantastic job and I’m really pleased for him.

The job is actually with Rising Music, which as some of our more avid readers will recall is also our latest client win. So in theory I should be a bit p****d off with Seb as effectively he’s stealing a client. I could get really arsey and start waving our client and employee contracts around. But I prefer to take a more mature view and say there are times when you need the lawyers, but more times when you don’t.

Seb is a fantastic account manager and I’m sure he’ll make a fantastic Head of Marketing for Rising Music. I just want to wish him well and say that the Wolfstar door is always open. And as Seb alluded in his post we’re relaunching the Wolfstar blog soon and there will be a space on it for alumni, because we never want to lose touch with our old friends.

Junior designer wanted at Raw Creative

Our sister agency Raw Creative is looking for a fresh faced and talented designer to join their team and help their small agency grow even further.

They are looking for enthusiasm, so they want somebody who jumps out of bed on a morning and makes a good cup of tea - only kidding.

This person will work alongside the senior designer and on their own, so the ability to see a project through from concept to artwork would be ideal.

The candidate will need a degree or equivalent in graphic design, and experience using Quark Xpress, Illustrator and Photoshop is essential.

Raw has a broad range of clients and projects so no one day is the same.

If this opportunity sounds appealing just send an email with your CV to craig@rawcreativeleeds.com and he will be in touch shortly.

Cross posted: Norton’s Notes

Wolfstar to work for a superstar DJ

I thought we better announce our latest bit of new business on the blog formally as I know not everyone needs to read our newsroom. We (Wolfstar) have won the contract to run a social media campaign for Chris Lake a world renowned DJ and dance music producer.

Chris has received critical acclaim and even managed to get into the UK charts last year with his track changes, in fact it reached number one in the dance charts in the US.

You can view our news release on this story here. Needless to say I and my colleague Seb can’t wait to get cracking on this because we both live and breathe dance music.

In the meantime, I have added a video of Chris in action at Space in Ibiza.

Have a good weekend.

Wolfstar formally welcomes Beth Jones to its team

For those of you who regularly read the blog, you will know we have had a friendly final year journalism student called Beth Jones working with us on a part-time work experience basis.

We have been so impressed with Beth’s writing ability, friendly nature and interest levels in social media and public relations that we have offered her an account executive position here at Wolfstar until she goes on her travels across America.

Beth starts formally from today and will be helping with anything and everything - so expect quite a few more blog posts and comments in the near future.

This of course does mean we now have two Beths in the office which could become confusing but don’t worry I am sure the team here can handle it if you can.

All joking aside, congratulations Beth well done and welcome to our team.

File sharing public relations - download now for free!

I’ve recently been talking to a good friend of mine who works in the music industry. A conversation that crops up more than any other is that of file-sharing. A term most people believe to be synonymous with ‘free-music’. At the somewhat naive age of sixteen, I myself downloaded Napster onto my parents computer, pulled off a few tracks before I accidentally added a nasty virus to their play-list. I forget the name of it, but needless to say, the PC was out of action for a long time!Based on this experience I swore never to indulge in ‘file-sharing’ again.

My friends main point was this; "if you see a car that you like the look of do you think you can just take it?" An ideal thieving opportunity presents itself - the key’s in the ignition, the door’s open, nobody around… Granted, this situation physically doesn’t compare to a few clicks on a mouse, but surely it becomes a question of morals…

When a CD cost £15-£20, 15 years ago, you did feel that it was a tad expensive, but it was a luxury good, so you paid it. You bought music when you could afford it, and it was special. Now the music industry is saturated. As a result you can by a whole album for next to nothing, be it on download or in the shops - this is one product that’s price hasn’t increased with inflation…. shhh… don’t tell Gordon B!

I’m aware there are several more debates to be had here, but I’m trying to drill down… So, how does this all relate back into public relations?

Well after having the afore mentioned conversation, I then brought the topic up with a couple of mates, who also work in public relations. At first they disagreed wholeheartedly… they believed artists to be "well paid", and "what was the problem?" … "It’s like lending a CD to your mate for a week." The obvious problem I had with this was that allowing several thousand people to share your files is a hell of a lot different to lending a CD. Then I found an analogy that had them both questioning their long-standing views:

How many times had they researched a brief at work, put together a high quality presentation and/or worked on a detailed proposal document? The answer was obviously lots! They immediately knew where this was going. I asked how many times, despite failing to win the new business, they’d seen their ideas, their concepts and sometimes even their very own time-plan and strategy, used and abused by an in-house team or competing agency post-pitch…

It makes me feel nauseous. If you want to hire an outside agency to do some work for you - then honour the process. If you decide to make your sourcing process competitive, fine, by all means do so, but don’t sit through a bunch of presentations and then rip off all their ideas. Word of mouth is a powerful thing, and before long you’ll earn yourself a reputation, and bad rep’s tend to stick….

Plus I’m a big believer in karma - and - what goes around comes around… try and do something on the cheap, and at some point or another it will go wrong… such is the way of the world.

Happy Birthday to us - Wolfstar is one!

Happy birthday to us! It is Wolfstar’s birthday! We are officially one year old today. It was on this date last year that Stuart and Tim launched Wolfstar and the ideas locked away in their heads finally became a reality.

It has been a great first year with some brilliant client wins including 4X Currency, energywatch, Fronter and many more exciting ones in the pipeline. We are all eagerly anticipating the coming year and hope to grow and expand Wolfstar into 2009.

Right I’m off to drink some bubbly with the rest of the team…

Is 21 the perfect age?

Hi my name’s Beth Jones and I’ve just started a work placement at Wolfstar.  Although I have almost finished studying for a Broadcast Journalism degree at the University of Leeds,  I have decided that PR is the way forward and what better place to start learning than at Wolfstar.

Finishing uni is just starting to sink in and it’s a horrible thought, despite this I have come to the conclusion that 21 is the perfect age, or at least with my limited experience I think it is. After my holiday in Atlanta this Easter visiting my folks I realised that I must appreciate every minute of being 21. I could see the nostalgia engulfing my dad as he rattled off stories from the good old days. The one which stuck in my head, and probably the one he was most passionate about, was his drunken antics on his 21^st birthday while posted by the RAF in the Borneo jungle.

Clearly I have already had the brilliant experience of visiting Atlanta this year. Apart from the lovely weather and friendly people, there is so much else that makes it such a great city. Firstly there was the scintillating dinner at the renowned Sundial restaurant, then there is the endless number of shops in Lennox Square but my favourite activity, which any visitor to Atlanta must do is visit the Turner Field  for a Braves game. I was a baseball virgin before this trip but having watched my first game, I’m hooked! Even if you don’t want to get immersed in the game itself there is so else much to do, the best part had to be watching the crowd on the big screen, laughing and waving desperately once they realised they had been caught by the camera. Ahhh good memories!

Not only does being 21 and a student allow the freedom to travel, it grants you the luxury of time. So my next venture is likely to be a festival. As an avid fan of Global Gathering (having been three years on the trot) I think it’s time to spread my wings. However this poses a problem, as I look to fellow friends hoping for some guidance in what to do, I end up torn between Barcelona’s Sonar festival  and Benicassim near Valencia. Hmmm who knows? Any advice? Either way it’s going to be an experience not to be missed!

If your looking for something a bit different, check out the Guardian’s guide to ‘20 British festival’s you’ll never have heard of’.

All I know is I won’t stay 21 forever and as my final summer of ‘no work and all play’ draws nearer I am on a mission to make it the best yet before I embark on my journey into the depths of the world of PR.

Next Page »