Member Article

r//evolution spills the beans to Max Clifford

Marketing services company r//evolution created a stir at the ‘Marketing: the art of’ event at the Sage, Gateshead on Monday when promotional staff painted orange played celebrity publicist Max Clifford at his own PR game.

“We wanted to create an impact,” said r//evolution’s senior account manager, Hugh Medcalf. “So our orange people mingled with delegates, handing out tins of orange jelly beans.”

When keynote speaker Max Clifford picked up a tin, Hugh took the opportunity to get a photo.

“In his talk Max stressed the importance of involving celebrities in order to increase media interest,” said Hugh. “The picture of him holding a tin of our jelly beans, flanked by our orange people is a classic example of this.

“He also mentioned that the best way for clients to determine how good a marketing agency is, was to look at campaigns they had been involved with,” added Hugh. “Our promotion was the perfect way to demonstrate this to potential clients. The whole thing created a real buzz because the two orange people literally stood out from the crowd and everyone was talking about them. The idea of handing out jelly beans was to draw people to our exhibition stand.”

The lid of each tin had a number on, which delegates were invited to write on their business card and enter into a draw to win an iPod - orange of course.

“Having a draw is a very popular idea at exhibitions,” said Hugh. “What we did was to think how we could apply our creativity to make it attract people’s attention.”

For more about r//evolution, visit www.r-evolution.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .