Public relations? It’s a strange phrase isn’t it. For some, it represents spin, double-talk and propaganda and for others it’s the poorer, slightly fluffier relation to the big daddy of advertising. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

For us, relating to publics is an holistic process, involving all the marketing disciplines, often unified around a single, compelling theme and aimed at creating greater clarity and understanding. Sometimes a brand is misunderstood, sometimes it’s only too well understood and sometimes it’s just not being heard. Whatever the problem, we’d like to think we can help. The thing is, we also think it’s time our industry looked beyond the obvious.

Advertising can achieve “good PR”, so can direct, ambient and guerrilla marketing – in fact the possibilities are almost endless. Which begs the question, why do so many agencies immediately reach for the press release?

To a certain extent, we’ve only got ourselves to blame. We let other disciplines lead the thinking, we focus on the process (let’s do some “PR”) rather than the outcome, and we often lack the courage to pitch the client the big idea.

So we started Unity to challenge the way people think about PR.

Our approach is simple. We’re an integrated marketing agency that tends to solve the kinds of problems most clients give to PR agencies, e.g. reputation and issues management, stakeholder dialogue and brand awareness. Sometimes we create campaigns that confront an audience with a core thought, what we call “consciousness raising”. Other times, we develop campaigns that encourage people to act.

And we’ve lived up to our mission by delivering a range of whole brain campaigns in recent months. We’ve used Christmas puddings, podcasts and indie music legends like Supergrass and the Dirty Pretty Things to help reduce homelessness, the grim reaper to launch a property website and, tea bags to talk to insurers. Woo, hoo!

We’re also starting to experiment with a blend of research, sampling and interaction – something we call two-way marketing, which enables stakeholders to get involved in your business and often means they become fierce advocates for your brand.

If you’d like to find out more, give us a call or send us an email to request a copy of our credentials.

Gerry Hopkinson & Nik Done, Unity founders

talktome@hellounity.com
Tel: 020 7440 9810

We do most things you’d expect an agency to do; and despite our earlier quip about publicity, we do enjoy a bit of media relations, it’s just that we don’t stop there. We’re equally at home considering a client’s competitive positioning, advising on a crisis, managing a road show or developing a creative mailing.

Our range of services include:
Advertising
Ambient media
Brand experience
Brand strategy
Copy writing
Crisis management
CSR & Sponsorship
Design
Digital
Employee communications
Field marketing
Guerrilla marketing
Interactive media
Media relations
Media training
Reputation management
Research

For more information on our corporate offering click here

To enable us to deliver a broad array of services, we have set up a marketing collective, we call “the Union”. They’re not employees, as they are gainfully employed already – they’re a group of like-minded friends who we’ve known long enough to be able to speak plainly to and vice versa, and who have been chosen for their specific expertise and tried and trusted ability to deliver.

In addition to calling on them as and when required for client campaigns, we get the group together regularly to shoot the breeze, share ideas and solve problems.

Victoria Collis
communications strategist, concept navigator, opera singer

Adam Garfunkel
CSR advocate, plain English copywriter, gooner

Mark Gordon
brand midwife, European diplomat, tri-athlete

Stephen Martin
market analyst, customer behaviour guru, geo-cacher

Nick Porter
PR maven, voice of reason, shoe collector

Stewart Prosser
corporate reputation builder, trusted advisor, trumpet man

David Steven
policy analyst, journalist, dust-buster

Jesse Swash
graphic designer, deadline hero, book addict

Spencer Thursfield
creative, *diversent, ex waterpolo ace

Adidas
Cancer Research UK
Cafédirect
Central Office of Information (COI)
Crisis
Direct Line
Discovery
Energy Saving Trust
Equazen
Fifteen
Friends of the Earth
Natmags
NatWest
Netmums
Nivea
Orange
Pearl Lowe
Pernod Ricard
Peroni
Pizza Express
Reed Elsevier
RBS
sk:n
ShakeAway
Stephen King
Totaljobs.com
NBC Universal
Virgin
Wasted Youth (prison gig)
World Wildlife Fund

Experience
Abbey
BDO Stoy Hayward
BT
City & Guilds
Egg
Electoral Commission
First Direct
Freeserve
Ginsters
LogicaCMG
Manpower Plc
MasterCard
Molson
The Post Office
Royal Navy
Royal & Sun Alliance
Swiss Re
T-Mobile
Unilever
Voca
Xerox

Screen Saver: The Age of Stupid
Winner: Live Brand Experience, PR Week Awards 2009
Winner: The Green Award, Event Awards 2009

Brief
Age of Stupid is a feature length docu-drama about the future effects of climate change, told retrospectively by a man in 2055, pondering why people didn’t change the course of history when they could, in the ‘Age of Stupid’ i.e. now! It’s an easy sell for environmentalists, but the aim was to engage the general public and mass media with the controversial subject matter, and make actual changes to attitude and behaviour, as well as entertaining the masses.

Approach
Given the nature of the brief, we decided to tell the story of the film in the vocabulary of the mainstream film industry. That meant fusing uncompromising environmental ethics with all the superficial fabulousness of Hollywood. Hell, we like a challenge! The focal point of the campaign became the UK’s greenest ever premiere. We turned London’s iconic Leicester Square, the cinematic heart of the UK, into an environmentalist’s vision of the future, demonstrating the changes required for a green future.

Work
The film was screened in a tent on Leicester Square green, on solar powered screens, with solar powered lanterns lighting the aisles and cinema seats made from recycled newspapers designed by Goldsmith’s students. An independent auditor concluded that the entire event had a carbon footprint of less than 1% of normal premiere – a huge achievement.

Ed Milliband, Alistair Campbell and Ken Livingstone rubbed shoulders with London’s queen of fashion Vivienne Westwood, Will Young, Gillian Andersen, tabloid darling Keeley Hazell, and the star of the film, Oscar-nominated Pete Postelthwaite. Limos were replaced by futuristic solar, gas & recycled chip fat powered cars, bikes, public transport & foot. We even had a bike-care entourage for our green carpet guests, and pampered our VIPS with pedal-powered popcorn and recycled blankets.

Timing was critical for the event as we needed to coordinate the premiere with 63 other cinemas around the country, who would link up to our event live in real time, placing it in the Guinness Book of Records for the worlds largest premiere (in keeping with the film we felt it needed to be a film inclusive rather than exclusive.) We also timed the start of a countdown clock to international climate congress in Copenhagen in December.

Outcomes
In addition to a World Record and PR Week Award, the campaign had some pretty considerable outcomes. The event generated 349 pieces of coverage, with 40,000 people watching our YouTube film. Impressively the film achieved the highest film average for its opening week – beating the likes of Julia Robert’s’ Duplicty and Slumdog Millionaire – and paved the way for it to be accepted in mainstream cinemas across the country. And our template for the People’s Premiere has been replicated in three further continents (to date!). Furthermore, via the event, the creators were able to create a climate coalition made up of more than 11 million people that eventually evolved into the high profile 10:10 campaign.

Brief
The Head of Comms at RBS approached Unity with a seemingly simple, but in reality fiendishly difficult brief: “can you help us to make Direct Line contemporary, culturally relevant and engaging for Middle England?”

Approach
We started with a planning project that allowed us to unearth a central truth about the brand, namely that it’s good in a crisis. From this, we developed an idea that bridged to wider society by focusing on the very British response to an everyday crisis, namely putting the kettle on!

The idea of coping well with a crisis had particular resonance against the backdrop of the recession. The old British blitz spirit was reawakened as people dug in their heels as the credit crunch took hold. Middle England especially takes genuine pride in coping during times of need, both through the ‘stiff upper lip’ pragmatism but also through providing tea and sympathy to our fellow man.

The British response to a crisis is to put the kettle on! To keep the campaign light-hearted, we decided to focus on everyday crises as opposed to major catastrophes. We dubbed these everyday disasters - solvable with a simple, curative cuppa - as tea-mergencies and set about exploring the phenomenon.

Work
We worked with City University London’s psychology department and our own insight team to devise an experiment that quantified that calming effects of tea. The results backed up our hypothesis, finding that a cup of tea really does calm Brits down after a crisis, in some cases making them even les anxious than before the “tea-ergency” begun.

Following the launch we seeded the term ‘tea-mergency’ on Twitter, aggregating use of the word and any reference to tea on a branded site Tea-mergency.com. Those unfortunates suffering a tea-mergency were plucked out and sent our Tea is for Trouble tea.

Outcomes
The campaign certainly stuck a chord with Middle England. Within the first week alone, more than 1,000 Tweets appeared using the #tea-mergency tag. The story spawned a series of double-page spreads, appearing in five national newspapers including The Mirror, The Express and the Daily Mail, whilst GMTV, ITN, Channel 5, and Sky News couldn’t wait to put our theory to the test, notching up an OTS of 281 million. The strategic alliance with tea was so right that Direct Line are now creating more tea and planning further activity around the Great British Tea-mergency.

Brief
Unity was the PR agency on the successful launch of Orange RockCorps - the neat initiative that inspires young people to volunteer by giving four hours in return for a ticket to a money-can’t-buy gig – on UK shores. When the programme returned for its second year, our challenge was to keep it at the front of the media agenda despite the concept being ‘old’ news, and help to recruit more volunteers than ever before.

Approach
Research provided us with an interesting insight. Music may be what attracts people, but the experience of volunteering itself is what gets people hooked. In the backdrop of the recession, with fewer opportunities for young-people than ever before, there was an interesting tension between a perception of an apathetic generation and the social action of the volunteers. Our approach was to amplify these volunteering experiences, and showcase the fun, rewarding side of the events. In doing so, we could glamorise the process to attract volunteers, whilst simultaneously generating debate and discussion about youth activism amongst stakeholders and wider society.

Outcomes
More than 8,000 volunteers gave a collective 32,000 hours back to the community during summer 2009, with plenty more desperate to do the same going on waiting lists for projects. The story dominated the media agenda for four months, with story leads in everything from The Sun to NME, BBC Breakfast to The Guardian, generating an OTS of a whopping 233 million! But the real success lies in the fact that Orange RockCorps – and volunteering - is seen as a key part of the social landscape amongst the target audience, with volunteering increasing across the board, and one in three participants going on to contact charities again without the lure of a gig ticket.

Brief
When rock goddess and interior designer Pearl stitched her first ever fashion collection, she needed extensive media coverage to market her designs. The launch collection was stocked in The Cross boutique. As it was Pearl’s ambition to make fashion a longer-term career, it was essential she earned a reputation as a design talent and attracted attention from other high-end retailers.

Approach
Pearl had initially designed 20 one-off dresses. Focusing on the quality and uniqueness of the dresses, and carefully balancing this with interest in Pearl as a personality, we embarked on a coverage offensive.

Work
Unity’s tireless work ensured that the collection was featured in practically every high fashion glossy magazine and broadsheet. We also organised a launch party for the collection on Halloween – a night of high gothic glam.

Outcomes
There was such a buzz created that by the time of Pearl’s launch there was already a waiting list for the dresses, which were snapped up by the likes of Liv Tyler and Courtney Love. The collection was so highly coveted that Pearl took further orders from Liberty, Nieman Marcus and a raft of other exclusive retailers.

Pearl’s reputation as a respected fashion design talent was cemented. The launch we arranged for her next collection at Liberty attracted a crowd of fashion’s elite, from style editors to fashionistas and rock royalty. The dresses will also be featured in the forthcoming Charlie Kaufman film Synedoche, New York.

Brief
When PizzaExpress wanted to develop a buzz around its longstanding association with jazz, it turned to Unity to develop something that would create standout, showcase the brand’s credibility and crucially, get people talking (and swinging!).

Approach
Our research showed that success lay in a campaign that would entertain and thrill the audience, pivoting around a central sense of jeopardy that would grow, evolve and invite discussion: just like jazz! We needed an idea that lived up to the spirit of jazz, based on teamwork, improvisation and unpredictability.

Our solution? The NeverEndingSong, a continuously performed (think 24/7), evolving jazz song that toured PizzaExpress restaurants and other venues around the UK over a week long period, taking in seven cities in seven days.

Work
The first step was to get the buy-in from the jazz industry, and find some ‘song guardians’ who’d played with everyone from Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse to accept the challenge. We then enlisted the help of everyone from Tara Palmer Tompkinson to Mystery Jets and Jocelyn Brown to take part in a legendary launch event at PizzaExpress’ iconic Jazz Club in Soho.

Next, we literally took jazz to the masses in a live brand experience, taking the song directly to people where they would least expect it, and inviting local talent to come and ‘jam’ with the song. The continuously playing performance kicked off on flagship Today Programme, and took a quick rest on the BBC Breakfast sofa and BBC 6Music before crashing media houses and being aired regionally up and down the country.

Outcomes
The NeverEndingSong successfully connected PizzaExpress with jazz legends, and helped to take the genre to a new audience. The experiential activity touched thousands of people in real-time, who used their peer-to-peer networks to spread the word further.

Coverage was achieved on a national and regional level, creating 31 million branded opportunities to see in one week.

And to top it off, a brand new World Record was set, giving the property an extra talking point.

Brief
NBC Universal told us that they needed to convince advertisers that SCI FI viewers were a world apart from geeky boys hidden away in their bedrooms. It was a mission we chose to accept.

Approach
Unity’s planning department had a sneaking feeling that there was a growing army of big kids out there – successful urbanites who loved all things childish, from toys to science fiction. We decided to investigate further, and commissioned a heavyweight report using TGI data.

Work
We boldly went where others hadn’t and identified a brand new audience segment. We uncovered a whole new tribe, which we dubbed the New Regressives – achingly cool, affluent urban 25-34 year olds who spend a collective £6 billion every year indulging their inner child.

We designed and wrote a super-slick, graphic heavy report, and mailed it to advertisers to inform and help them speak the language of the New Regressives.

Outcomes
The report proved to have supernatural powers when it came to opening doors for meetings with potential clients, as the New Regressives gave them a whole new audience to target.

What’s more, the media loved it. The amplification of the findings within the press meant that SCI FI came to the attention of a new audience just in time to convert them to loyal viewers for the launch of new cult show Heroes.

Brief
sk:n, the national network of skin and body clinics, wanted to promote its anti-aging and suncare treatments, which include skin peels, microdermabrasions and sun protection. One thing mattered: generating as many new clinic enquiries as possible during a one-month period.

Approach
We believed it was crucial for sk:n to educate the public about the regular damage most of us subject ourselves to by not properly taking care of our skin. We placed a skin scanner at the heart of our campaign - a nifty little device that can detect premature aging, sun damage and even the early signs of skin cancer - offering free assessments to the public and donating £1 for every test taken to the British Skin Foundation (BSF) for research into skin disease. We devised an integrated campaign called Face Facts.

Work
The Face Facts campaign took a four-pronged approach:
1. Online - We created an online film that showed a beautiful girl prematurely aging, and propagated it broadly via YouTube, handbag.com, eve and prima. We also created an online skin calculator that allowed members of the public to key in data and generate an average skin age.
2. Media relations - We conducted research that revealed the majority of 18-24 year olds already had irreversible sun damage, which got extensive coverage in the national press. To bring home the fact that young people were in danger, we skin-scanned members of T4’s Shipwrecked to highlight the effects of sun damage. We also scanned other celebrity endorsers such as Meg Matthews and placed their stories in the likes of Cosmopolitan and Closer magazine.
3. On the ground - We took the skin scanner out on the road, encouraging members of the public to try it and help us raise money for the BSF in the process.
4. Ambient - From one skin to another, we handed out fresh fruit with relevant messaging – easy peel oranges invited recipients to ‘Peel back the years’ and ‘Get some zest.’

Outcomes
In the four week period we generated 7089 new enquiries – a record number – and undertook 997 skin assessments, raising nearly £1,000 for the BSF. At least 2,500 of the enquiries were directly attributable our campaign. Of those 2,500, 57% were converted into full paying customers generating £142,500 of business in less than three months and on course to generate £712,500 in six months.

Brief
Heat journalist Dan Fulvio approached Unity following the tragic death of his brother Stephen, who took his own life on Xmas eve. Motivated by the fact that suicide is the biggest killer of young men in the UK, Dan set up Wasted Youth to raise awareness of this great British taboo. He also wanted to raise funds for a new helpline aimed at young lads for Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) via a benefit gig at Koko, Camden.

Approach
Unity knew that in an era of charity gig fatigue, the benefit alone wouldn’t be enough to get Britain – and young men in particular – talking. Taking the theme of music – highly relevant as self-expression is key to helping disenfranchised young men – and applying this to the place where suicide is highly concentrated, Unity devised the bold plan of staging a Johnny Cash style prison gig.  The gig was designed to raise awareness of the issue and also promote ticket sales to the follow-on public performance at Koko.

Work
Unity set about the arduous task of convincing the prison service to support Wasted Youth. After close consideration over artists (Babyshambles – a key emblem of disenfranchised male youth – were vetoed by the prison but their interest was discussed at large in the media), Dirty Pretty Things and The Enemy were handpicked to play a set to inmates in Pentonville, the first-ever rock gig in a British prison.

The event was hotly anticipated by both the media and bloggosphere, and achieved blanket coverage, from mainstream media to die-hard specialist music blogs. More than 7,000 people watched the YouTube video within 2 days, whilst the message was given further cache for the target audience through via a specially commissioned campaign T-shirt from House of Holland.

Outcomes
Our objectives were surpassed as an omnibus survey revealed that 30 per cent of young lads said they were aware of the Wasted Youth campaign and as a result knew that suicide was the biggest killer of young men. Ninety per cent of coverage also promoted the public performance and consequently the Wasted Youth event at Koko became a sell-out gig. Whilst media coverage helped generate a buzz, it was ultimately the vociferous debate among lads on social networking sites, blogs and forums, informing one another that help was at hand whenever they felt desperate – that was true proof of the campaign’s success.

Screen Saver: The Age of Stupid
Winner: Live Brand Experience, PR Week Awards 2009
Winner: The Green Award, Event Awards 2009

Brief
Age of Stupid is a feature length docu-drama about the future effects of climate change, told retrospectively by a man in 2055, pondering why people didn’t change the course of history when they could, in the ‘Age of Stupid’ i.e. now! It’s an easy sell for environmentalists, but the aim was to engage the general public and mass media with the controversial subject matter, and make actual changes to attitude and behaviour, as well as entertaining the masses.

Approach
Given the nature of the brief, we decided to tell the story of the film in the vocabulary of the mainstream film industry. That meant fusing uncompromising environmental ethics with all the superficial fabulousness of Hollywood. Hell, we like a challenge! The focal point of the campaign became the UK’s greenest ever premiere. We turned London’s iconic Leicester Square, the cinematic heart of the UK, into an environmentalist’s vision of the future, demonstrating the changes required for a green future.

Work
The film was screened in a tent on Leicester Square green, on solar powered screens, with solar powered lanterns lighting the aisles and cinema seats made from recycled newspapers designed by Goldsmith’s students. An independent auditor concluded that the entire event had a carbon footprint of less than 1% of normal premiere – a huge achievement.

Ed Milliband, Alistair Campbell and Ken Livingstone rubbed shoulders with London’s queen of fashion Vivienne Westwood, Will Young, Gillian Andersen, tabloid darling Keeley Hazell, and the star of the film, Oscar-nominated Pete Postelthwaite. Limos were replaced by futuristic solar, gas & recycled chip fat powered cars, bikes, public transport & foot. We even had a bike-care entourage for our green carpet guests, and pampered our VIPS with pedal-powered popcorn and recycled blankets.

Timing was critical for the event as we needed to coordinate the premiere with 63 other cinemas around the country, who would link up to our event live in real time, placing it in the Guinness Book of Records for the worlds largest premiere (in keeping with the film we felt it needed to be a film inclusive rather than exclusive.) We also timed the start of a countdown clock to international climate congress in Copenhagen in December.

Outcomes
In addition to a World Record and PR Week Award, the campaign had some pretty considerable outcomes. The event generated 349 pieces of coverage, with 40,000 people watching our YouTube film. Impressively the film achieved the highest film average for its opening week – beating the likes of Julia Robert’s’ Duplicty and Slumdog Millionaire – and paved the way for it to be accepted in mainstream cinemas across the country. And our template for the People’s Premiere has been replicated in three further continents (to date!). Furthermore, via the event, the creators were able to create a climate coalition made up of more than 11 million people that eventually evolved into the high profile 10:10 campaign.

Brief
The Head of Comms at RBS approached Unity with a seemingly simple, but in reality fiendishly difficult brief: “can you help us to make Direct Line contemporary, culturally relevant and engaging for Middle England?”

Approach
We started with a planning project that allowed us to unearth a central truth about the brand, namely that it’s good in a crisis. From this, we developed an idea that bridged to wider society by focusing on the very British response to an everyday crisis, namely putting the kettle on!

The idea of coping well with a crisis had particular resonance against the backdrop of the recession. The old British blitz spirit was reawakened as people dug in their heels as the credit crunch took hold. Middle England especially takes genuine pride in coping during times of need, both through the ‘stiff upper lip’ pragmatism but also through providing tea and sympathy to our fellow man.

The British response to a crisis is to put the kettle on! To keep the campaign light-hearted, we decided to focus on everyday crises as opposed to major catastrophes. We dubbed these everyday disasters - solvable with a simple, curative cuppa - as tea-mergencies and set about exploring the phenomenon.

Work
We worked with City University London’s psychology department and our own insight team to devise an experiment that quantified that calming effects of tea. The results backed up our hypothesis, finding that a cup of tea really does calm Brits down after a crisis, in some cases making them even les anxious than before the “tea-ergency” begun.

Following the launch we seeded the term ‘tea-mergency’ on Twitter, aggregating use of the word and any reference to tea on a branded site Tea-mergency.com. Those unfortunates suffering a tea-mergency were plucked out and sent our Tea is for Trouble tea.

Outcomes
The campaign certainly stuck a chord with Middle England. Within the first week alone, more than 1,000 Tweets appeared using the #tea-mergency tag. The story spawned a series of double-page spreads, appearing in five national newspapers including The Mirror, The Express and the Daily Mail, whilst GMTV, ITN, Channel 5, and Sky News couldn’t wait to put our theory to the test, notching up an OTS of 281 million. The strategic alliance with tea was so right that Direct Line are now creating more tea and planning further activity around the Great British Tea-mergency.

Brief
Unity was the PR agency on the successful launch of Orange RockCorps - the neat initiative that inspires young people to volunteer by giving four hours in return for a ticket to a money-can’t-buy gig – on UK shores. When the programme returned for its second year, our challenge was to keep it at the front of the media agenda despite the concept being ‘old’ news, and help to recruit more volunteers than ever before.

Approach
Research provided us with an interesting insight. Music may be what attracts people, but the experience of volunteering itself is what gets people hooked. In the backdrop of the recession, with fewer opportunities for young-people than ever before, there was an interesting tension between a perception of an apathetic generation and the social action of the volunteers. Our approach was to amplify these volunteering experiences, and showcase the fun, rewarding side of the events. In doing so, we could glamorise the process to attract volunteers, whilst simultaneously generating debate and discussion about youth activism amongst stakeholders and wider society.

Outcomes
More than 8,000 volunteers gave a collective 32,000 hours back to the community during summer 2009, with plenty more desperate to do the same going on waiting lists for projects. The story dominated the media agenda for four months, with story leads in everything from The Sun to NME, BBC Breakfast to The Guardian, generating an OTS of a whopping 233 million! But the real success lies in the fact that Orange RockCorps – and volunteering - is seen as a key part of the social landscape amongst the target audience, with volunteering increasing across the board, and one in three participants going on to contact charities again without the lure of a gig ticket.

Brief
When rock goddess and interior designer Pearl stitched her first ever fashion collection, she needed extensive media coverage to market her designs. The launch collection was stocked in The Cross boutique. As it was Pearl’s ambition to make fashion a longer-term career, it was essential she earned a reputation as a design talent and attracted attention from other high-end retailers.

Approach
Pearl had initially designed 20 one-off dresses. Focusing on the quality and uniqueness of the dresses, and carefully balancing this with interest in Pearl as a personality, we embarked on a coverage offensive.

Work
Unity’s tireless work ensured that the collection was featured in practically every high fashion glossy magazine and broadsheet. We also organised a launch party for the collection on Halloween – a night of high gothic glam.

Outcomes
There was such a buzz created that by the time of Pearl’s launch there was already a waiting list for the dresses, which were snapped up by the likes of Liv Tyler and Courtney Love. The collection was so highly coveted that Pearl took further orders from Liberty, Nieman Marcus and a raft of other exclusive retailers.

Pearl’s reputation as a respected fashion design talent was cemented. The launch we arranged for her next collection at Liberty attracted a crowd of fashion’s elite, from style editors to fashionistas and rock royalty. The dresses will also be featured in the forthcoming Charlie Kaufman film Synedoche, New York.

Brief
When PizzaExpress wanted to develop a buzz around its longstanding association with jazz, it turned to Unity to develop something that would create standout, showcase the brand’s credibility and crucially, get people talking (and swinging!).

Approach
Our research showed that success lay in a campaign that would entertain and thrill the audience, pivoting around a central sense of jeopardy that would grow, evolve and invite discussion: just like jazz! We needed an idea that lived up to the spirit of jazz, based on teamwork, improvisation and unpredictability.

Our solution? The NeverEndingSong, a continuously performed (think 24/7), evolving jazz song that toured PizzaExpress restaurants and other venues around the UK over a week long period, taking in seven cities in seven days.

Work
The first step was to get the buy-in from the jazz industry, and find some ‘song guardians’ who’d played with everyone from Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse to accept the challenge. We then enlisted the help of everyone from Tara Palmer Tompkinson to Mystery Jets and Jocelyn Brown to take part in a legendary launch event at PizzaExpress’ iconic Jazz Club in Soho.

Next, we literally took jazz to the masses in a live brand experience, taking the song directly to people where they would least expect it, and inviting local talent to come and ‘jam’ with the song. The continuously playing performance kicked off on flagship Today Programme, and took a quick rest on the BBC Breakfast sofa and BBC 6Music before crashing media houses and being aired regionally up and down the country.

Outcomes
The NeverEndingSong successfully connected PizzaExpress with jazz legends, and helped to take the genre to a new audience. The experiential activity touched thousands of people in real-time, who used their peer-to-peer networks to spread the word further.

Coverage was achieved on a national and regional level, creating 31 million branded opportunities to see in one week.

And to top it off, a brand new World Record was set, giving the property an extra talking point.

Brief
NBC Universal told us that they needed to convince advertisers that SCI FI viewers were a world apart from geeky boys hidden away in their bedrooms. It was a mission we chose to accept.

Approach
Unity’s planning department had a sneaking feeling that there was a growing army of big kids out there – successful urbanites who loved all things childish, from toys to science fiction. We decided to investigate further, and commissioned a heavyweight report using TGI data.

Work
We boldly went where others hadn’t and identified a brand new audience segment. We uncovered a whole new tribe, which we dubbed the New Regressives – achingly cool, affluent urban 25-34 year olds who spend a collective £6 billion every year indulging their inner child.

We designed and wrote a super-slick, graphic heavy report, and mailed it to advertisers to inform and help them speak the language of the New Regressives.

Outcomes
The report proved to have supernatural powers when it came to opening doors for meetings with potential clients, as the New Regressives gave them a whole new audience to target.

What’s more, the media loved it. The amplification of the findings within the press meant that SCI FI came to the attention of a new audience just in time to convert them to loyal viewers for the launch of new cult show Heroes.

Brief
sk:n, the national network of skin and body clinics, wanted to promote its anti-aging and suncare treatments, which include skin peels, microdermabrasions and sun protection. One thing mattered: generating as many new clinic enquiries as possible during a one-month period.

Approach
We believed it was crucial for sk:n to educate the public about the regular damage most of us subject ourselves to by not properly taking care of our skin. We placed a skin scanner at the heart of our campaign - a nifty little device that can detect premature aging, sun damage and even the early signs of skin cancer - offering free assessments to the public and donating £1 for every test taken to the British Skin Foundation (BSF) for research into skin disease. We devised an integrated campaign called Face Facts.

Work
The Face Facts campaign took a four-pronged approach:
1. Online - We created an online film that showed a beautiful girl prematurely aging, and propagated it broadly via YouTube, handbag.com, eve and prima. We also created an online skin calculator that allowed members of the public to key in data and generate an average skin age.
2. Media relations - We conducted research that revealed the majority of 18-24 year olds already had irreversible sun damage, which got extensive coverage in the national press. To bring home the fact that young people were in danger, we skin-scanned members of T4’s Shipwrecked to highlight the effects of sun damage. We also scanned other celebrity endorsers such as Meg Matthews and placed their stories in the likes of Cosmopolitan and Closer magazine.
3. On the ground - We took the skin scanner out on the road, encouraging members of the public to try it and help us raise money for the BSF in the process.
4. Ambient - From one skin to another, we handed out fresh fruit with relevant messaging – easy peel oranges invited recipients to ‘Peel back the years’ and ‘Get some zest.’

Outcomes
In the four week period we generated 7089 new enquiries – a record number – and undertook 997 skin assessments, raising nearly £1,000 for the BSF. At least 2,500 of the enquiries were directly attributable our campaign. Of those 2,500, 57% were converted into full paying customers generating £142,500 of business in less than three months and on course to generate £712,500 in six months.

Brief
Heat journalist Dan Fulvio approached Unity following the tragic death of his brother Stephen, who took his own life on Xmas eve. Motivated by the fact that suicide is the biggest killer of young men in the UK, Dan set up Wasted Youth to raise awareness of this great British taboo. He also wanted to raise funds for a new helpline aimed at young lads for Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) via a benefit gig at Koko, Camden.

Approach
Unity knew that in an era of charity gig fatigue, the benefit alone wouldn’t be enough to get Britain – and young men in particular – talking. Taking the theme of music – highly relevant as self-expression is key to helping disenfranchised young men – and applying this to the place where suicide is highly concentrated, Unity devised the bold plan of staging a Johnny Cash style prison gig.  The gig was designed to raise awareness of the issue and also promote ticket sales to the follow-on public performance at Koko.

Work
Unity set about the arduous task of convincing the prison service to support Wasted Youth. After close consideration over artists (Babyshambles – a key emblem of disenfranchised male youth – were vetoed by the prison but their interest was discussed at large in the media), Dirty Pretty Things and The Enemy were handpicked to play a set to inmates in Pentonville, the first-ever rock gig in a British prison.

The event was hotly anticipated by both the media and bloggosphere, and achieved blanket coverage, from mainstream media to die-hard specialist music blogs. More than 7,000 people watched the YouTube video within 2 days, whilst the message was given further cache for the target audience through via a specially commissioned campaign T-shirt from House of Holland.

Outcomes
Our objectives were surpassed as an omnibus survey revealed that 30 per cent of young lads said they were aware of the Wasted Youth campaign and as a result knew that suicide was the biggest killer of young men. Ninety per cent of coverage also promoted the public performance and consequently the Wasted Youth event at Koko became a sell-out gig. Whilst media coverage helped generate a buzz, it was ultimately the vociferous debate among lads on social networking sites, blogs and forums, informing one another that help was at hand whenever they felt desperate – that was true proof of the campaign’s success.

If you’d like to find out more about Unity or request a copy of our credentials, please get in touch.

Unity
Ground Floor
5–13 Hatton Wall
London EC1N 8HX
0207 4409810
talktome@hellounity.com




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