Propaganda, the Leeds-based strategic brand consultancy, has been nominated for a Social Value Award by the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) for their impactful work for GenM.
The award celebrates work that has enabled clients and consultancies to achieve outstanding and sustainable benefits for wider society.
GenM was founded by Sam Simister and Heather Jackson, who were unwilling to settle for the invisibility of the UK’s 15.5 million menopausal women and non-binary and trans people in menopause.
The founders engaged Propaganda in 2021 to help their brand gain traction. Working hand in hand with Sam and Heather, Propaganda recommended a strategic pivot from being a one-stop shop for consumers to becoming the menopause partner for brands. By partnering with existing brands, GenM was able to rapidly scale their social impact, while creating a sustainable business plan for long-term .
To raise the profile of the menopause audience – making the invisible visible – Propaganda created and produced powerful national campaigns, achieving a wide range of national and industry coverage including titles such as Forbes, The Times, Camapaign, Marie Claire, Courier, Times Radio, and BBC News.
In the six months since launching, 55 pioneering brands have become GenM Partners, publicly committing to take action to improve the menopause experience. Partners include household names such as Boots, Marks and Spencer, Royal Mail, and JP Morgan.
Most importantly, organisations are already creating positive change, from developing menopause-specific products, and enhancing store signposting, to creating menopause workplace policies, sharing taboo-busting internal comms, and launching campaigns to overcome censorship of women’s health on social media.
Laura Kynaston, Managing Director of Propaganda, said, “As the only brand consultancy ever to be accepted as members of the MCA, we are delighted to be nominated for our work with GenM. It underscores Propaganda’s purpose-led approach. In all our work, we strive to make it matter. And championing a better menopause experience matters to millions of under-served women, as well as impacting everyone in our wider society.”
Sam Simister, co-founder of GenM, added, “Propaganda got to the heart of what we were trying to achieve. Their recommendations made the evolution to our new brand proposition easy. We’re still in our first year, with a clear trajectory in place to attract and retain more brand partners, who collectively will help us normalise the menopause conversation and improve the menopause experience for all.”
The MCA Awards winners will be announced on 14 November 2022.
Links for more information:
Propaganda: https://www.propaganda.co.uk/
GenM: https://gen-m.com/
MCA Awards Finalists: https://www.mca.org.uk/mca-awards/finalists
Propaganda is excited to announce that it has been shortlisted for two Northern Digital Awards 2021, for Best Integrated Campaign with Roberts Bakery and Best Digital Marketing Campaign in Health and Beauty with Love Hemp.
The Northern Digital Awards recognise the very best in digital marketing and celebrate exceptional agencies, teams, campaigns and talent from across the region.
Propaganda has been acknowledged for its work on the #ShareYourBakes campaign with next generation bakery, Roberts Bakery, and the Love Life campaign with CBD brand Love Hemp.
Both digital campaigns were strategically planned, launched and implemented in 2020, amid the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19.
Award winners will be announced via a virtual awards ceremony on Thursday 28th January 2021.
Managing Director at Propaganda, Craig Harrold, says “We are thrilled to have been recognised for not one, but two Northern Digital Awards this year. We’re known for prioritising strategy over tactics and this recognition demonstrates our ability to articulate and deliver brands across all channels and touch points. We’re looking forward to the virtual awards ceremony next month!”.
Propaganda is thrilled to announce its recent award win for Best eCommerce Crisis Response Campaign at the Northern eCommerce Awards 2020, for the #ShareYourBakes campaign with Roberts Bakery.
The Northern eCommerce Awards celebrate the very best in eCommerce and online retailing from across the North of England and winners were announced virtually on Thursday 1st October.
Prior to lockdown, Propaganda had been working with Roberts Bakery on a project that would bring Roberts closer to its customers, but the crisis of COVID-19 presented a new challenge.
Panic buying and demand for bread grew significantly at the start of lockdown, leading to supermarket shortages in finished products as well as the ingredients to bake bread at home.
These challenges created the perfect storm for Roberts Bakery, to accelerate its direct to consumer proposition with the support from Propaganda.
Within two weeks, a fully integrated campaign was launched including a D2C website where consumers could purchase ready-made bread products and baking kits, as well as a national TV campaign, digital, social media and PR support.
Ultimately, this resulted in Roberts Bakery becoming the first major bakery brand in the UK to sell directly to consumers. In just 4 weeks, the D2C website had received over 100,000 unique users, over 350,000-page views and 2,000+ orders.
Managing Director at Propaganda, Craig Harrold, says “The launch of the fully integrated campaign and D2C site in such a short space of time, is a testament to Propaganda and Robert’s ability to be agile in the most challenging of circumstances. Receiving this award really helps to underline the value in all the great work we have produced, to support consumers in their time of need.”
Propaganda is excited to announce its recent award win for ‘Fashion/Apparel eCommerce Website of the Year’ at the Northern eCommerce Awards 2019, for its work with long-term client Gym King.
The ceremony at The Hilton in Manchester, on the 23rd October, celebrated the best in eCommerce across the North and hosted over 300 attendees.
Market-leading British athleisure brand, Gym King, sells fresh clothing including coats, t-shirts and tracksuits, and is available in over 1,000 stores worldwide including JD Sports, Footasylum and Zalando.
In early 2018, Propaganda undertook a digital audit and one of the recommendations was to redesign and build the website to incorporate the latest e-commerce best practice principles. Alongside this, a digital strategy was developed to increase traffic and user engagement on-site.
The new and improved website saw a 145% improvement in conversion rate within the first year, with the average order value increasing by 26%.
The website, alongside the wider digital strategy including paid social, paid search, email and affiliate marketing, has further enhanced Gym King’s established reputation.
Propaganda was up against strong competition for the award from agencies across the North, including Statement Agency for its work with NEU Apparel, and Visualsoft for its work with Moda in Pelle.
The judges of the award noted, “This entry was extremely strong – it ticked all the boxes in terms of what they were looking for from an eCommerce fashion website. Overall a great entry!”
James Winfield, Digital Director at Propaganda, said “We are thrilled to have won Fashion/Apparel eCommerce Website of the Year for our work with Gym King. Since creating the Propaganda Digital Proposition in November 2017, the team and client base has grown significantly, but Gym King was our first client so it’s a proud moment for us to be recognised for our transformative work on this project.”
Jay Parker, CEO of Gym King, commented “Working with Propaganda has been a great experience and has helped us to cement our position in the market, growing awareness and developing the brand. We came to Propaganda because of their reputation for getting results for their clients, and we’re looking forward to continuing our partnership.”
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At Propaganda, we love to celebrate a good award win, and it doesn’t come much better in the world of Retail Logistics than being honoured by industry flagship title, Retail Week. That’s exactly what happened to our longstanding client Tony Mannix, Chief Executive Officer of Clipper Logistics plc, when he was named as the Supply Chain Leader of the Year at the Retail Week Supply Chain Awards.
We’ve worked with Tony and his colleagues at Clipper since 2008, and over that time, seen a few changes, not least their highly successful floatation on the stock market in 2014.
Clipper and Propaganda have worked together on many leading campaigns over the past decade, and we’ve helped the business develop and launch many innovative retail solutions during Tony’s time on the board. Boomerang™, Clipper’s reverse logistics solution, and the award-winning ClickLink™ initiative, a joint venture set up alongside The John Lewis Partnership have been two notable examples.
Tony’s win was announced at the awards gala dinner, celebrating retailers, suppliers and individuals who are driving progress in the retail supply chain industry. We’re proud to be associated with such a fantastic success story, and look forward to being involved in the next big innovation.
[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image media=”66314″ media_width_percent=”100″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row row_height_percent=”0″ overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ shift_y=”0″ css=”.vc_custom_1477409608576{padding-left: 5% !important;}”][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Propaganda are pleased to announce that we have achieved double award success at this year’s Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Awards. Our wins came in both the Innovation and Strategy categories, for a project with our client ReFood. The awards, which bring together leading UK firms to celebrate consulting excellence, were presented at the ceremony in London on the 27th April.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image media=”66143″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]ReFood is a UK leader in food waste recycling, turning waste food and drink into renewable energy. A natural by-product of the process is digestate, traditionally seen as a waste product. Prior to our work, ReFood paid significant disposal charges to local Farmers each year for them to take the waste product.
With AD forecasted to grow in the UK by 800% by 2020, digestate market supply was set to increase, the challenge of reliable, cost effective, disposal was therefore set to worsen and was fast becoming a sector-wide issue. A further challenge was the market perception of digestate as a waste stream, without commercial value. To date, the AD sector had failed to monetise the high nutrient content of digestate.
As a result of the project, ReFood has a clear strategy to deal with the digestate challenge that is already yielding significant operational savings each year. A phased plan has been developed, designed to evolve the digestate product to produce a high value revenue streams.
The strategy has further cemented ReFood’s market leader position, created a unique closed loop proposition and has seen the launch of ReGrow the UK’s first branded, food waste derived biofertiliser.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image media=”66144″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]In each of the categories entered, we were up against extremely strong competition from the likes of Deloitte, Arup and Cognosis, who submitted entries for their work with clients such as Network Rail, the NHS and Transport for London.
Richard McMurrough, Director at Propaganda said: “We are thrilled to have won two awards at the MCA Awards. In both categories, we were up against incredibly strong competition, which really makes the recognition even greater for us. It’s brilliant to see the hard work of two Yorkshire based businesses take on some strong contenders and win. As members of the MCA, we know that these awards celebrate the very best work of the consulting industry, so these wins mean a great deal.”
Philip Simpson, Commercial Director of ReFood commented: “Propaganda demonstrated vision and value in conceiving and developing the ReGrow brand. Not only that, they’ve successfully taken it from that initial idea to successful delivery, I’ve not experienced any other business that would be capable of this approach. This double win at the MCA awards, in which we faced some tough competition is incredible. This project solved a big challenge for our industry, so it’s brilliant to have that work commended.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row row_height_percent=”0″ overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ shift_y=”0″][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Ruth Negga wore a striking blue ribbon contrasted on her red dress in support of the American Civil Liberties Union, who have spoken out against Trump’s travel ban, Emma Stone and Dakota Johnson wore gold badges to beam their support of Planned Parenthood across the globe and Ava DuVarney chose to wear a gown by a designer from a majority Muslim country.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image media=”65985″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]As for all the brilliant politically charged speeches and quotes, check out some of the best here, but it’s the actions of Emma and Ava et al that have touched us the most.
Maybe it’s because actions sometimes speak louder than words, something we feel particularly strong about right now, as, closer to home, our very own Illamasqua is in the midst of taking it’s own stand right now by asking Trump supporters NOT to buy its products.
Julian Kynaston, founder of Illamasqua, said “We refuse to remain silent while extreme right-wing populism gains momentum wherever it is happening…we will never knowingly sell our products to people who support President Trump’s values.
“It’s up to everyone to make a stand. From Ruth Negga making a subtle statement, to Joe Bloggs protesting in their local city and consumers making informed choices about which brands they buy, nobody is small or insignificant, and together we can make a difference.”[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
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We’re proud to reveal that we have been shortlisted once again for the MCA Awards, this year in the categories of Strategy and Innovation for our work alongside longstanding client, ReFood.
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We place great pride on our membership of the Management Consultancies Association. We’re still the only creative brand consultancy to gain accredited membership and it’s one of the things that makes our offer unique. Taking on convention and industry stereotypes is part of our day job, and is one of the reasons we’ve enjoyed such success at the annual event. Winning an award, often when up against some of the Management Consultancy ‘heavyweights’, showcases our rigorous approach to brand and business.
This year, work for our client, ReFood, who recycle food waste via the process of Anaerobic Digestion (AD), will be judged against other industry leading campaigns. ReFood transforms food waste into biogas, which in turn can be fed into the national grid, or used to generate electricity. A by-product called digestate is produced, which ReFood paid to dispose of. Due to ReFood’s plans for growth, and the forecasted increase in volume handled, we needed to address this industry-wide challenge, before it became even more significant.
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Through the insight gained and our experience of their sector, Propaganda developed a comprehensive plan to turn this ‘waste’ into a revenue stream: a branded fertiliser product called ReGrow. As part of our entry, we had to demonstrate how the recommendations we provided had applied new and emerging ideas, processes and technologies to successfully transform our client’s operation. This was achieved by changing the perception in the agricultural industry of digestate, and by turning it into a branded biofertiliser, which is high in the key nutrients necessary for plant growth, and has monetary value.
The development of this new, clear and validated strategy has allowed ReFood to achieve operational savings of circa60%, has further cemented their market-leader position, and created a unique closed loop proposition. The success of the strategy that we developed and implemented for ReFood is what encouraged us to enter this project into the awards.
The ceremony will take place on April 27th at a central London location, and ahead of that, we’ll be looking to impress the expert judging panel, with all the details surrounding this exciting project.
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