Silent Lines….the UK tour that made us want more!
When our friends at Russell Maliphant Dance Company got in touch with us and offered us the opportunity to look after the 10 month comminications campaign for the UK national tour of its much anticipated new work, Silent Lines… we certainly didn’t need to be asked twice.
Over the course of 2019 we were tasked with organising the announcements of the work and the world premiere in April at DanceEast in Ipswich where RMCo is ‘Company in Residence’ on a national level and managing press activity for the entire tour on a regional level featuring dates in Nottingham, Newcastle, Guildford, Salford Quays, Wycombe, Birmingham, Taunton, Llanelli, Aberystwyth and Lancaster before organising press attendance for the final shows at Sadler’s Wells, London this weekend.
We planned the campaign down to the letter and worked really closely with the RMCo team and the press and marketing representatives of each venue within the tour to ensure that absolutely no stone was left unturned – this beautiful piece of work deserved maximum exposure and meticulous strategy.
Over the course of the campaign we placed have interview features in The Guardian, The Times, The Stage and The Wonderful World of Dance amongst others.
Further regional features included Creative Tourist, Quays Life, Sommerset County Gazette, Watford Observer, East Anglian Daily Times, BBC Radio Lancaster, Morecombe Visitor and Lancaster Evening Post to name a few.
Silent Lines, as a production, is something that we feel honoured too have worked on here at Sundae; the very energy of the piece and the visually rich and resonant connections between internal and external worlds is something that has inspired us throughout.
It has been an incredible experience; one that transcends dance and our own world of publicity as the media are so engaged with the innovative nature of the work and Russell Maliphant’s unequivocal genius levels that the campaign took a life of it’s own.
The Silent Lines UK national tour is a dance that we don’t want to end and as we look forward to Sadler’s Wells this weekend with a press list consisting of reviewers from The Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, Evening Standard, Classical Source and Bachtrach plus many more we are filled with pride that when the curtain comes down we will have achieved the coverage that the production deserved.
Right now we are off to tie up the very last loose ends and prepare for the weekend… we cannot wait to read the reviews!
Tom x
Images courtesy of Russell Malipant Dance Company
On-set at The Tez O’Clock Show….in yo’ FACE!
We’ve been building towards this moment for weeks and now it’s here…. and of course we’re here!
Team Sundae is at MediaCityUK, on-set, on the ground at RX1 of Tez Ilyas’ The Tez O’Clock Show by Expectation for Channel 4.
The studio is bubbling with the vibration of hushed excitement; amongst the audience are some of Tez’s friends and family, some key media, and some well known Manchester faces.
Speaking of faces… our Wednesday evening has been made even more special by the presence of TJ and Sara who are here to do a BTS interview feature on Tez and the making of the show for, the iconic and newly re-lanched, The Face
TJ is taking care of words for the article so we get the ball rolling by making sure he has a great spot within the live studio audience for the duration of the recording. Next, we speak to Sara who is taking care of photos to figure out just how she is going to get the shots that she needs – turns out that this can only happen by all of us moving very (VERY) quickly!
We’re ready!
John Bishop has just turned up and is getting ready to go on stage. Everybody is already in stitches as Tez is warming up the audience – if you have ever seen Tez do stand up then you can imagine how hilarious this is – and when John joins him it goes next level.
And we’re off!
The record starts and the talent are doing their thing, the photographers are doing their thing and as much as we’d love to pop our trotters up and enjoy the show… we are now doing our thing.
We’re thinking about tomorrow’s newslines and clips; what will make in the morning? What best represents the show? What are the hot topics? What will people find funny?
Thanks to the talent on show, by the end of the record we’ve got more than enough material for the morning.
We work with the amazing production team at Expectation to decide which of our selections are the most newsworthy for them to turn into slick, perfectly edited clips overnight for us to issue first thing – John Bishop talking about the audience taking to the streets to overthrow the current government and make Tez Prime Minister (see video below) is a no brainer!
It’s late at night now but Sara’s got her pics, TJ’s had the Tez experience and we’re all set to tell the press what to expect from tomorrow’s show.
TJ’s meeting Tez round the corner first thing in the morning for the interview portion of the feature… we better get to bed!
Tom x
(Images: The Tez O’Clock Show / Expectation / Channel 4 / Joseph Scanlon / Stuart Wood / publicity shots)
The journey to Shangri-La – Glastonbury’s naughty corner
Festivals, music, art and creativity are at the heart and soul of Sundae, so it was an incredible honour to be asked to look after press and publicity for this year’s Shangri-La, our favourite ‘naughty-corner’ of Glastonbury, the festival of all festivals.
Little did we know when exploring the late-night mecca in previous years that we’d be invited to be part of such a beautiful and talented family of creative pioneers, and share their vision for Shangri-La’s tenth incarnation with the world.
I first met Shangri-La’s artistic director Kaye Dunnings eight months ago at 2018’s Design Manchester festival, when she came and delivered a show-stopping talk about her 17 year relationship with Glastonbury. She told her personal creative story, which began delivering installations at Lost Vagueness, and later creating Shangri-La with an incredible ground-breaking collective of artists, musicians and producers to guide the field in the South-East corner of Glastonbury through ten shape-shifting formations.
More than a music festival, and far beyond an art gallery, Shangri-La is a completely unique, politically challenging, community building and above all wildly entertaining production that takes months to develop. For us, it is truly a dream project, as it brings together all that we love, with an infectious, inspiring, heart-warming life force of its own.
We’ve been on site for three days already, after a recce three weeks ago, which is absolutely nothing compared to the six weeks or more the build team, led by Kaye’s partner Willy Brothwood, have been living here for. In even those three days, we’ve seen the site change beyond measure, with the art and venues growing and changing by the hour. We’ve also had the warmest of welcomes and already feel like we never want to leave.
We’ve been kept busy over the past weeks. This year’s theme, Junkstaposition, as ever, couldn’t be more timely, and it has garnered huge interest even before anyone has seen the field, which is being kept strictly under wraps until the first full day of the festival tomorrow.
Junkstaposition isn’t the creative ‘theme’ you might find at another festival, it’s a mirror of the Re-use, Recycle, Resist mantra the Shangri-La team live in their personal and professional lives. This year, we worked with Creative Boom and Creative Review to tell the story of how Shangri-La is created, and all the people that contribute, shining a light on some of the interactive creative responses to it.
Every single item you find at Shangri-La has been re-used or re-cycled, and this year the 360 Gas Tower arena is being made from 10 tonnes of plastic collected from beaches across the South West of England, a project developed in partnership with the Orca Sound Project and Keep Britain Tidy. This created huge media interest, with hundreds of titles across the UK covering the news.
Also new for this year, Shangri-La is hosting new venue The Shed, produced by artistic director Moses Powers, and dedicated to celebrating positive masculinity. This is a completely new festival concept, and so to tell its story thoughtfully, we worked with Moses on an opinion editorial for the Huffington Post, which explained its inception, intent and programme.
Walking around Shangri-La, you can feel the anticipation, and there’s so much to come, it’s difficult to pin-point the element we’re most excited about. From the art, which is still transforming before our eyes, to the incredible music line up, delivered by the legendary Chris ‘Tofu’ MacMeikan, which includes Denzel Curry, Craig Charles, Norman Jay, IDLES and the secret act we couldn’t contain our excitement about any more, Sleaford Mods.
See you on the other side.
Fiona x
Sundae + Animation? You do the MAF!
What a day for Manchester Animation Festival, Barry Purves and Sundae Communications!
This morning, ahead of the festival launch, we took renowned director and animator Barry Purves along with his RTS award winning Twirlywoo puppets to MediaCity to take their place on the BBC Breakfast sofa and talk about his 40 years in the industry and his events at MAF 2018.
Barry’s visit to the BBC Breakfast studio was made all the more special as we, alongside the festival team, arranged for him to find out about his MAF annual Fellowship Award live on air; it was a complete surprise and a really lovely moment – you can see a clip of his appearance on their Twitter here!
Fresh off the back of finding out about his award live on television, Barry swung over to BBC Radio Manchester where we had arranged for him to be interviewed by the wonderful Chelsea Norris, airing tomorrow morning, and even found time to record a video for their social team about how to get children into animation… all in all, an amazing morning’s work.
Barry is an Oscar and BAFTA nominated director usually, but not exclusively, working with animation, especially puppet animation. He has been involved, mainly through Cosgrove Hall, with many series and programmes for television such as Rainbow, Chorlton and the Wheelies, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, The Wind in the Willows, Rupert Bear, Postman Pat, and Bob the Builder, either as animator or director.
There are few animators like Barry Purves. Working in feature, television and short films where he has won acclaim for his works internationally making an incredible contribution to British animation globally. After 40 years in the animation industry MAF will not only be awarding Barry for his achievements but will be hosting ’40 Years of Barry Purves’ tomorrow, Wednesday 14 November at 5:30pm, to take a look back on Barry’s career and talk through it with the man himself.
The MAF 2018 communications campaign has been an incredibly successful one so far with key previews, features, listings, local interest stories and interviews in i Newspaper, I Love Manchester, Manchester Evening News, MEN Online, Screen Daily, Animation Magazine, Animation World Network, TheHotCorn.com, Prolific North and Family Traveller to name a few.
Right, we’re all off to the launch event of the festival… see you on the other side!
x
Sundae does the Bees-ness…. one last time!
Providing a beautifully fitting end to an incredible Bee based summer for Sundae Communications was the Bee in the City auction. The extra special night saw 77 (and a secret 78th) of the Bee in the City sculptures which featured on this summer’s art trail auctioned off to raise an unbelievable £1,128,250 for The Lord Mayor of Manchester’s We Love MCR Charity.
Celebrity auctioneer and TV personality Charles Hanson (Bargain Hunt, Flog It!) and Briony Harford hosted the charity auction, which took place at the HSBC UK National Cycling Centre. The Bees went under the hammer in front of guests digging deep to bid, as well as online and telephone bidders.
The most popular Bee on the night was Bee United painted by Joseph Venning, sponsored by Manchester United Football Club and adorned with Manchester United footballing legends, which raised £31,000 at auction plus an extra £5,000 donated by the club, totalling £36,000 raised. Other highlights included A Worker Bee’s Work is Never Done by Laura-Kate Chapman, which raised £25,000, and Dazzle Bee by Liz Faram which also raised £25,200. A surprise 78th lot was added to the end of the auction on the night; a blank Bee to be painted by the winners’ choice of a Bee in the City artist, which raised £22,000.
This rousing finale to the Bee in the City initiative was the most rewarding part of the campaign for us, as we saw the fruits of our labour, alongside the Wild in Art team, come to life in the form of a huge amount of cash raised for an amazing cause so close to our hearts.
As the results came rolling in, we got to work and proceeded to spread the word about the money raised to key media, live, direct, as it happened. Prior to the event we lined up Granada Reports to head along and cover the auction alongside the MEN who were live blogging about each and every lot straight to their website.
In addition we gained key regional and national coverage in outlets such as BBC North West Tonight, i Newspaper, MSN.com, BT.com, Mail Online, ITV.com, MEN, Design Week, Hits Radio, Manchester Confidential and I Love Manchester taking the overall reach of the campaign to over 1.2 billion.
We are so, so proud to have been a part of Bee in the City and to have delivered one of our finest campaigns to date; it has been an absolute rollercoaster and one that we would ride every single year if we could! We shall miss it dearly and it will forever Bee the cherry on top of our Sundae.
x
(Images: Bee in the City / David Oates)
Nickelodeon: Find Me In Paris
Sundae Communications delivered the campaign for ground-breaking new teen drama Find Me in Paris as it premiered on Nickelodeon UK in September 2018.
The gripping drama featuring amazing dance sequences is produced by Cottonwood Media and filmed on location at the Paris Opera Ballet.
The show stars up and coming British talent – Jessica Lord (CBBC’s The Next Step), Hannah Dodd (Harlots), Eubha Akilade (Eve, Clique), Rory Saper (The Legend of Tarzan) and Canadian actor Castle Rock (The Descendants 2).
The series also boasts UK director Matt Bloom, best known for his 2018 International Emmy and BAFTA nomination for the hit series Hank Zipzer.
This show is trail-blazing youth content and the first time young people’s content has been given the high end international budget now associated with adult content.
Working with the Nick UK press office, Sundae delivered an extremely well attended press junket in central London that achieved key coverage across an extensive list of national titles with 22 pieces of coverage across print and digital with an overall reach of 60,116,174.
National coverage included previews, features, fashion features and listings The Daily Mail, Radio Times, TV & Satellite Week, express.co.uk and BT.com. There was strong kids coverage in Fun Kids, Kidzcoolit, Girl Talk, Shout, First News and Top of the Pops and great regional coverage in the East Anglian Daily Times.
There was strong interest in the Scottish cast, Eubha Akilade and Christy O’Donnell which led to interview features and news stories in Scottish Sunday Express, The Scottish Sun, The Herald and The Scotsman.
Working with the team at Nickelodeon is an absolute pleasure and their strong support and collaboration was fundamental to delivering such a successful campaign… this isn’t one we’ll forget in a hurry!
x
(Images: Nickelodeon UK)
Heading for the Ramsbottom Hills
After a successful rebrand and publicity campaign last year, it was music to our ears when we were asked to continue working on the award-winning music festival, Head For The Hills in Ramsbottom for a second year running.
With beautiful panoramic views of rolling Lancashire hills, amazing food, arts and world-class headliners as your soundtrack to the weekend, Head For The Hills offers something for everyone and we were extremely excited to get started on our 2018 press campaign.
To kick the campaign off in style, we announced the Head For The Hills 2018 lineup in March with a launch party and gig at Blueprint Studios in Manchester.
Nestled away in one of Blueprint’s most famous studio spaces, the launch night was buzzing with press, musicians and industry professionals, coming together to hear who would be gracing the stages at this year’s festival.
We surprised the audience with a preview of this year’s lineup with live performances from much-loved Liverpool pop trio Stealing Sheep, upcoming post-punk three piece LIINES and singer songwriter Mano McLaughlin.
In between acts, artistic director of Head For The Hills, David Agnew delivered the final line up news with which included The Bluetones, The Boomtown Rats, Emily Cappel, The Selecter and The Lovely Eggs all on the bill.
The official line up was revealed to all via our good friends at BBC Radio 6 Music, which went down a storm alongside an interview with Stealing Sheep about their planned Suffragette Tribute, developed with the brilliant Brighter Sound for a festival tour culminating with Head for the Hills.
The 2018 lineup was also incredibly well received by regional press, including BBC Radio Manchester, Manchester Evening News, Manchester’s Finest, Bury Times, NowThen magazine, Bolton News and Rossendale Free Press.
As the festival approached, we looked to the nationals, family and arts press achieving a wide spread of pre-event coverage in the i newspaper, Big Issue North, Raring2Go, Families Online, Family Go Live, Entertain The Kids and Creative Tourist, and it was clear that the festival was one of the ‘top things to do with the kids’ in September and everyone want to hear about it.
In the final lead up to the festival, we had the pleasure of announcing The Slow Readers Club as the Friday night headliner, which piqued the interest of the broadcast media, from an exclusive interview with The Slow Readers Club on the opening episode of BBC Radio Manchester’s brand new weekend programme, ‘The Dead Good Show,’ to our festival management team being interviewed on BBC Introducing Manchester and ‘The Drift’ on BBC Radio Lancashire.
We also secured a number of great previews including Manchester’s Finest, Bury Times, Louder Than War, NowThen , Bolton News and the Lancashire Telegraph, however our ultimate highlight was reaching the front page of Manchester Evening News’ what’s on magazine City Life accompanied by a full page preview. This was a first for Head For The Hills and a great testament to how the festival has grown over the past eight years.
Over the weekend, thousands of festival-goers dressed for showers and hoped for sunshine, heading down to Ramsbottom Cricket Club for the festival season’s final fling which didn’t disappoint. It was a busy but smooth-running few days for Sundae as we managed all of the bands’ press interviews, which took place in our very own buntified press tent! We even managed to catch some bands ourselves and sample some of the delicious food on offer from Tampopo.
Since the weekend, the festival has received some superb coverage across the board including a 4 star review from the Manchester Evening News and many more from Bury Times, Family Life Bury, Bolton News, Louder Than War and Raring2Go Bury – and there is still more to come!
With nearly 100 pieces of coverage in our rain coat pockets and having reached over 120 million people with our campaign, it has been a glorious six months working on one of the most fruitful, family friendly and eclectic festivals that Manchester has to offer….here’s to many more! 🙂
MC x
(Images: Chris Payne / Andrew Allcock)
The Hexagon Experiment
Earlier this year Manchester-based music charity Brighter Sound announced their latest venture, The Hexagon Experiment – a mind-altering series of six free ‘Friday night experiments’ featuring live music, conversations and original commissions from pioneering women at the forefront of music, art and science.
Inspired by the creativity that led to the discovery of the Nobel-Prize winning ‘wonder material’ graphene, The Hexagon Experiment took place over six weeks during the summer as part of The Great Exhibition of the North in Newcastle and brought together some of the North’s most exciting musicians and scientists for six free events every Friday.
From music made by robots with Haiku Salut, to a spectacular tribute for unsung heroine, Delia Derbyshire by Liverpool pop trio Stealing Sheep, each event consisted of a live performance and an in-conversation between women at the cutting edge of science and the creative arts.
The Hexagon Experiment also formed part of Brighter Sound’s ‘Both Sides Now’ initiative, a three-year programme to support, inspire and showcase women in music across the North of England, and featured a five day ‘Both Sides Now’ residency with Anna Meredith to showcase nine upcoming female and non-binary musicians from the North East at the final event, entitled Works In Progress, which saw the musicians create new pieces of music and visual art inspired by the idea of Micro/Macro.
Here at Sundae we are extremely passionate about working on content that breaks the mould and strives for diversity and gender parity in the media industry. Over the last 12 months we have actively followed and supported Brighter Sound’s work and when we were approached by the team to help publicise The Hexagon Experiment in the final lead up, we were absolutely delighted to help!
With a truly amazing cluster of musical talent on board such as Anna Meredith, Jane Weaver, Haiku Salut, Stealing Sheep, Sara Lowes and Afrodeutsche, and championing such a strong message for more diversity in the music industry, this was definitely a project we wanted to shine a light upon for Brighter Sound and the amazing artists they were showcasing.
As part of our strategy, we created a bespoke short lead publicity campaign based around the project’s individual events with an emphasis on the talent behind them and the ‘Both Sides Now’ campaign.
This resulted in impactful and meaningful coverage that engaged with the project and explored the wider issues and messages for Brighter Sound. We also collaborated successfully with the talent behind the project to land some amazing features including a music experiment spectacular with Drowned In Sound, a blog with Jane Weaver on Big Issue in the North and two fabulous opinion pieces with Stealing Sheep on CLASH magazine and Oh Comely.
Overall, The Hexagon Experiment was an amazing and thought provoking project to work on and Sundae delivered a great selection of online, print and broadcast coverage with a total overall reach of nearly 20 million people.
Further highlights include interviews with Jane Weaver and Anna Meredith on BBC Radio 6 Music and listings within i-D magazine, The Pool, Grazia, Metro, NARC and the i newspaper.
For further updates on The Hexagon Experiment and Brighter Sound, please visit their website here.
Sundae gets Manchester buzzing for Bee In The City art trail
After a whirlwind Bee In The City VIP launch at the Manchester Town Hall in November last year, we were absolutely delighted to be taken on by global art producer, Wild In Art to deliver the full press and publicity campaign for this summer’s major Bee In The City art trail in Manchester.
As our friends and clients will know, we are an agency that LOVES art and LOVES celebrating our wonderful city so when we came on board, we were so excited and brimming with ideas.
The bees have all been designed by different artists and include the likes of Hilda Bugden, I Wanna Bee Adored and Hac Bee Enda. One achievement we are incredibly proud of is our collaboration with legendary Oasis singer Liam Gallagher. In the lead up to the trail, we developed a partnership with Liam to create a Rock ‘n’ Roll Bee alongside artist Julie Dodd. In June, Sundae took a special trip to Parklife festival so Liam could meet and sign his finished bee for the first time which ultimately received global coverage. Press titles include NME, ITV News, Hits Radio, Radio X, Manchester Evening News, Hollywood.com, Female First, plus much more.
From Liam Gallagher to Bez, The Rolling Stones to Sting, celebrities and press from far and wide have been gravitating to towards Bee In The City campaign in more ways than one.
Fast forward to July and here we are having just delivered a huge VIP press launch with the likes of Press Association, The Guardian, BBC News, Manchester Evening News, Granada Reports, Gaydio and BBC Radio all in attendance with some incredible results. To say we are BUZZING with the result would be an understatement and its only just the beginning.
Make sure you catch the bees around the city from 23 July to 23 September, after which they will be auctioned off to raise money for the Lord Mayor of Manchester’s We Love MCR charity.
We are expecting thousands of visitors to be writing, sharing, snapchatting, tweeting and posting about these wonderful creations so make sure you check them out!
MC x
(Images: Charlie Lightening / David Oates)
Hear Her, the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy comes to the BBC
We were very proud to work with the Donmar Warehouse again this summer when the films of its trail-blazing all-female Shakespeare Trilogy came to the BBC.
The TX was part of the BBC’s Hear Her season, beginning with the broadcast of Julius Caesar on BBC Four in June, and the world premiere of Henry IV and The Tempest on the BBC iPlayer, where all three films will remain for a brilliant six months, watch it here.
Described by Susannah Clapp (Observer) as ‘one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years’, the Trilogy features an all-female cast led by Dame Harriet Walter, one of the greatest living Shakespearean actors, and is directed by Phyllida Lloyd (The Iron Lady, ROH: Macbeth), for both stage and screen.
In Julius Caesar, Phyllida Lloyd has taken her striking production of Shakespeare’s famous discourse on power, loyalty, and tragic idealism, and used her considerable directorial vision to shape it into a gripping on-screen version which was welcomed into the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2017, and nominated for a number of awards as a film in its own right.
The incredible cast continues to reach new heights and the broadcast was supported by a brilliant set of interview features, pitched by our Donmar account manager Tom, including Phyllida Lloyd in the Observer New Review and Olivier Award winner Sheila Atim in the Daily Telegraph. Watch this space for an upcoming Financial Times podcast from the wonderful Dame Harriet Walter. There was also an insightful piece in the Guardian from the Donmar’s outgoing artistic director and executive producer Josie Rourke and Kate Pakenham, which you can read here.
The television broadcast and iPlayer premiere campaign delivered on a dream strategy, hitting every mark, and wide range of audiences, with key coverage across an extensive list of national titles with Critics Choices, Highlights and Picks of the Day in The Sun TV Mag, TV Times, TV & Satellite Week, Radio Times, What’s On TV, Daily Mail Weekend, Mail on Sunday, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times Culture, Daily Star, DIVA Magazine and i-D Magazine, even garnering an impressive five stars in the Financial Times.
Unbelievably there is still more to come from the Donmar Trilogy, as it is now available for free to schools via the National Theatre’s On Demand platform, supported by an incredible array of bespoke content here, and an education programme is due to start in September, which we can’t wait to be part of.
Sundae x
Images: Donmar Trilogy / Publicity shots / Helen Maybanks / Nadav Kander