Hello Soho! My name’s Kitty Hennessy. Nice to see you again.

Starting at Launch this week has felt like coming home – in more ways than one. I started my professional and PR life in the mighty Soho Square, just around the corner from Launch Towers in Archer Street W1. It got me thinking as to why so many creative industries choose to set up shop on King Henry VIII’s former hunting field.

It’s certainly not glamorous or picturesque to the naked eye – but perhaps that’s the point: all life is here. And always has been. The colourful locals on our corner come from a long tradition in Soho, when loitering wasn’t loitering but each corner was in fact an unofficial labour exchange. Archer Street was the musician’s quarter with nearby Compton and Frith Street for waiters, literally waiting for work.

Perhaps Soho’s creative notoriety stems from the entrepreneurship that was left behind when the employers had been and gone; survival of the fittest (or most imaginative). Artists, musicians, actors, poets  and everybody else besides gathered in the many great watering holes to devise ways of making their fame and fortune and more than a few succeeded – past residents of the area include: Karl Marx, Casanova, William Blake and Mozart.

I think that is the key to the lure of Soho – inspiration is everywhere you look, and that, combined with vision and creativity, do a successful mixture make. No wonder the Launch lot are so invigorated – you live by your wits round here!

It’s that time of year again – the first day of advent.  And that means only one thing at Launch Towers – the return of the famous Launch Advent Quiz.  Every day a festive brain-teaser is circulated with the fastest-finger winning the chance to open one of the 25 packages.  Check out our Twitter feed to join in!

Is one of your new year’s resolutions to be working at a ‘PR Week Best Place to Work’ agency, implementing exciting client campaigns for the likes of Tesco, BP, Capital One, Disney & The Royal British Legion, with an incredible bunch of like-minded people -  then look no further!

Launch Group is recruiting for brilliant consumer Group Account or Account Directors, Consumer Account Managers, Corporate Account Execs and Graduates to work across our all-channel accounts.  You will be results-minded, have a love of media relations, and have experience working at well-known agencies on big, well-known brands and have a passion to be part of an exciting, growing agency.

Please send your CV to cvs@launchgroup.co.uk and we look forward to a very Happy New Year with you.

If you’ve been in a recent meeting at Launch Towers you will have experienced the influx of new, rare wildlife which have inhabited the agency…..  a series a hairy caterpillars that have made their homes on the upper lips of our male Launchers.  And might I say they are very impressive!!!  Account Director, Dan, is leading the way for money raised (if not for bushiest mo) whilst Director, Andy, is streets ahead with his full-on Magnum-style tash.  The team, led by Mo Bro Account Director, Mark, has raised £215 so far to help increase vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.  But they still need more!  You can donate here.

Mo Sister, Katie

Today’s date (11.11.11), a perfect palindrome and a particularly poignant Armistice Day as the Royal British Legion commemorates its 90th Anniversary. To say it’s been busy at Launch Towers would be an understatement. The RBL team has been working relentlessly in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday securing media opportunities left right and centre. With too many to mention individually, I’ve compiled a few highlights from the last couple of weeks.

Boris meets Doris

Boris Johnson appeared with Launch’s very own Harriet ‘Doris’ Murphy to launch London Poppy Day, the largest single fundraising day in the capital with servicemen and volunteers aiming to raise over £500,000 in just 12 hours. Thanks to Harriet (and of course Boris), the pictures made it to page 2 of the Evening Standard and kick started the media frenzy…

London Poppy Day

Question: What do you get if you cross nearly 1,000 men in uniform and a load of poppies. The answer is London Poppy Day, a PR dream and enormous honour.

The largest fundraising day started with a bang with Launch’s illustrious team leader Rebecca running round London trying to coordinate service personnel, beneficiaries, route master buses, Olympic cyclists and a number of national film crews. Whoever said working with children and animals was difficult should speak to Rebecca about coordinating the PR for London Poppy Day! Joined at her side by media hound Charlie who was last seen running after the TFL commissioner’s routemaster bus as it left without her and the BBC London film crew who had come down to film the bus! Thankfully she caught up with it and the team achieved some astounding coverage (personally some of the best I’ve ever witnessed) including numerous broadcast interviews with BBC London News and ITV News.

Piggybacking the news agenda

A particularly great piece of ‘PR piggybacking’ also occurred. Cue ITV News broadcasting a piece on the opening of a new road in the city complete with vintage cars driving down Regent Street. I can only imaging their PR team’s frustration as some rather dashing soldiers holding trays of poppies appear in the back of the vintage cars. Sorry!

May the force(s) be with you

To mark the end of London Poppy Day with a total of nearly £450,000 raised in just 12 hours, the team headed down to Leadenhall Market for a glass of wine with the soldiers. Without giving too much away, we lost an umberella and gained a few friends…..my lips are sealed *ahem*!

Shoulder to Shoulder

In true ‘All Channel PR’, some phenomenal digital work as we also launched Shoulder to Shoulder. The RBL team capitalised on the random appearance of Suggs in the building and added to the virtual wall of Remembrance alongside the Saturday’s, Lorraine Kelly, Barbara Windsor, Andy Murray to name a few. The number of people currently standing shoulder to shoulder is 17,000  but is increasing by the day.

From Cupcakes to Bling….Poppies take over the world!

Any of you watching  Live with Gaby today will have seen Flossie cup cakes for Remembrance Day and Recipes for Remembrance….massive well done to Larissa, the relentless phonecalls have paid off! Twitter also went crazy last weekend with the airing of Strictly Come Dancing and the X-Factor….well done to Charlie who couldn’t physically have featured more poppies on primetime TV if she had tried!!

And finally… today the team went down to Silence in the Square. A truly moving experience for me personally given that my grandfather died serving his country in the Navy. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with the Launch team to achieve the phenomenal amount PR coverage for the Royal British Legion. What a fantastic start to my time at Launch.

It’s not all swank dos and drinks receptions in the glamorous world of PR…but then again, sometimes it is! This week Launch were lucky enough to join First News at The Park Plaza to celebrate Henry Winkler’s newly awarded OBE. Henry Winkler (AKA ‘The Fonz!’) was given his OBE in September in recognition of his work with schools across the UK as he helps children to better understand dyslexia.

Having being diagnosed with dyslexia as an adult, Henry has undertaken numerous tours over the past few years to talk to children about the learning disability. He has also written books for children featuring the fictional character Hank Zipzer, a boy with dyslexia whose stories mirror Henry’s real life experiences. Having grown up in a time when he was simply labelled as stupid or incapable, Henry knows all too well the struggles that face sufferers of the condition, and consequently speaks about the cause with genuine passion, care and intelligence. By the time he leaves a school all of the kids want to be dyslexic!

The party was the perfect opportunity to celebrate his achievement and the continuing success of First News, who delivered a brilliant speech on brand responsibility before Henry was given the chance to show off his new medal. With entertainment provided by Dynamo, Bradford’s hardest working magician, everyone left with a smile on their face.

A thoroughly enjoyable evening for a genuinely lovely bloke!

Happy days.

(budum chh)

We’ve always known that Launch is a great place to work but now everyone else knows it too!

It’s been celebration time at Launch Towers this week as we’ve just been named as one of PR Week’s Best Places to Work for the second year running!

In a survey of the PR industry to find out which are the best agencies to work for in the UK (that’s around 3500 agencies by the way) Launch received the bronze medal, with the judges being particularly “impressed with the agency’s commitment to staff wellbeing and training”.  And being one of the main things that attracted me to Launch in the first place, I would be inclined to agree with them.

Since starting at Launch five months ago, I’ve had regular 1-2-1s with my line manager and Johnny, our CEO, to discuss my development, enjoyed several training sessions on everything from commercial practices to twitter, joined the team on an amazing trip to Paris in honour of their stunning work on a client campaign and even been promoted.

One of the standout things about Launch is that if you are interested in doing something, they will give you every opportunity to do so and as the company moves into an exciting new decade, I can’t wait to see what that will bring.

To find out about Launch’s other top drawer benefits that caught the judges’ eyes (and the eyes of our Launchers) check out the awards results online here.

Being the ambitious bunch we are though, along with our Olympic hopefuls, we’ll be going for gold next year so watch this space.  Or, better still come and join us!

Most of the recruitment we do is looking for the hottest PR talent about – but we’re currently looking for something a little different…..

…we have a vacancy in our Support function, and are looking for someone special to join the team. The role of PA& Office Manager includes PA support to the CEO & Board, general office management as well as admin support to our HR function. It’s a full time role based in our busy London HQ and would be perfect for a highly organised, energetic person who would thrive on being involved in the running of a growing business.

If you think you’ve got what it takes, please send your CV and covering letter to katieb@launchgroup.co.uk and one of the team will be in touch.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

So last Thursday was the day that the Launch team headed across the Channel to Paris for some well deserved fun and to kick off our 10^th birthday celebrations. Standard stag night rules of course apply in terms of ‘what happens in Paris stays in Paris’, but hopefully this should give some insight into what turned out to be an amazing day.

Setting off bright and early from St Pancras station after a delicious breakfast of croissants and caffeine, the anticipation in the departures lounge was palpable. Pictures were already being snapped and quiz sheets filled out. Highlight of the morning was trying to guess which of the listed 33 previously unknown facts related to each Launcher. Did you know that amongst our happy bunch we have a Launcher who once swallowed a yellow paintball mistaking it for bubblegum? A trained pharmacy assistant? A child model for Woolworths? Someone who is afraid of Pinocchio (sorry Disney)? And a Launcher who performed and danced in the finals of a national school musicals competition winning an award for best choreography which was done by their mum? Probably shouldn’t mention it was Dan who appeared in this critically acclaimed musical Children of the Night…

So as you can probably imagine there was much excitement while trying to work out the shady secrets of the people we spend most of our waking lives with. Upon arrival en France we headed to Jardin du Luxembourg for the most amazing picnic I’ve ever seen. Much saucisson, camembert, delicious bread and vin rouge was consumed before we set off around Paris with a list of challenges and tasks. We tend to get a bit competitive in these situations and this occasion was no different.

Tacky souvenirs were bought, landmarks visited and ‘French-looking’ people were photographed. Luckily we made it back to Gard du Nord just in time for our train back to London where the fun continued and needless to say we were all feeling rather ‘merry’.

It was a fantastic day and a great way to kick off our birthday celebrations. A huge thanks to Johnny for taking us, and to Katie and Stuart for planning an amazing day and looking after a group that was about as easy to manage as a bag of snakes.

I’m not sure the buffet carriage on the Eurostar had ever seen quite so much chaos and I’m glad I managed to get through this blog without mentioning the incident involving a bicycle, the police and a smashed taxi driver’s headlight…well nearly.

Howdy, I’m Lucy and I got the privilege to do a week’s work experience at the fabulous Launch Group HQ.

I have had a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting week working with all the delightful people at Launch. They were all so friendly and within the first day I felt like I had been there for a while!

This was the first time I had worked within PR and I have to say I loved it, from helping with day to day admin tasks, to brainstorms and meetings! My glimpse of living the London life couldn’t have been any better; eating out everyday, going out for lunch with the Launch lot (especially going out with the corporate team to Wahaca where we had the most delicious Mexican food), and also being shown the interesting sites of Soho, even the ‘adult street’! I got to see the Olympic Ceremony of “one year to go” at Trafalgar Square with the likes of The Feeling performing and even standing next to one of The Feeling’s mum in the crowd!

My week at Launch consisted of working in every aspect of PR and it gave me a real insight into PR. I have had a brilliant week working within Launch Group and the people I worked with were amazing. I would like to thank them all for an enjoyable and fun week of work despite having been on holiday for a whole month already they made it easier getting me back into the working mood!