Month: September 2017

Every year we do a client survey to get feedback on how we’re doing. Obviously we’re in regular contact with clients all year round but the annual survey is an important touchstone for us to make sure that all our key client contacts have the opportunity to sit back and tell us what they think.

Some of the numbers are below, and they’re great, but it’s the informal feedback, testimony and little golden nuggets of suggestions for improvements that can be really valuable.

Being honest and sharing results (good or bad) and giving people feedback where they’ve taken the time to contribute is really important too. Miss that bit out and your credibility starts to suffer.

Authenticity is the comms buzzword of 2017 but the thing about authenticity is it has to apply in word and deed – it’s no good having an incredible website full of promises if the client’s experience doesn’t match up to it.

Thanks for reading.

Chris.

It was a quiet night at the UK Public Sector Communications Awards last week.

Nothing to talk about at all except we only went and won the award for Best Use of Media Relations for our work on the New Wear Crossing with Sunderland City Council!

Really good night and hugely valuable conference in the afternoon. Our award was the icing on the cake and we were quite pleased as you can tell.

It was also great to see so many other great public sector communicators rewarded for their efforts, and a special mention has to go to the team at Greater Manchester Police for their phenomenal comms work in the wake of the Manchester Arena terrorist attack – worthy winners is something of an understatement.

Great company to be in, a real reward for the effort and creativity the team has shown on the New Wear Crossing Project over the past two years and lot of valuable learning.

Thanks for reading

Chris

This summer we’ve been busy launching the new Merseyflow tolling system with its client international tolling specialist emovis and Halton Borough Council.

We’ve enjoyed the challenge and it has been a fast moving and dynamic campaign. The PR and marketing campaign is aimed at encouraging drivers of the 20million vehicles expected to use the new Mersey Gateway Bridge every year from its opening date this autumn, to register.

The client view

Anthony Alicastro is Chief Executive Officer of Emovis Operations (Mersey) Limited., a wholly-owned subsidiary of emovis, which runs the merseyflow operation. He said: “The team at DTW have provided high quality PR and marketing solutions to launch merseyflow’s registration campaign. In the first few weeks, we have achieved 45% of our target and are on track to reach our objectives. With DTW’s combined experience and expertise coupled with their proactive approach, the whole team have really boosted our campaign. They are extremely professional and a pleasure to work with.”

David Parr is Chief Executive of Halton Borough Council and the Mersey Gateway Crossings Board. He said: “DTW have worked with us on the Mersey Gateway project for a number of years now. They make it their business to understand our business. The tolling campaign for Mersey Gateway has been a fantastic example of this. They have capitalised on their in-depth knowledge of both the project and todays multi-media environment to ensure no stone has been left unturned in communicating the key messages to a wide variety of potential bridge users locally and nationally.”

The background

Registration for merseyflow opened on Monday 17th July and almost 45,000 vehicles have been registered in the first seven weeks.

We’re using a mix of media relations, social media, advertising, animations, video and infographics to explain and promote the registration options to future users of the bridges.

Targeted paid for campaigns have been running across Facebook, Google Display Network, Sky Adsmart and YouTube, with additional advertising targeting the local and regional audience and also freight drivers and commuters.

This is just the latest phase of our work on this incredible project – we helped create and launch the merseyflow tolling brand earlier this year, with www.merseyflow.co.uk acting as the central hub for registration, advice and information.

Before that DTW has been working on the Mersey Gateway Project through the planning, public inquiry, construction and now tolling phases over the past decade. The project, which has a lifetime cost of £1.86 billion, is the largest transport infrastructure project currently being developed in the UK outside of London.

We’ve worked hard to build up understanding of and demand for tolling registration since the merseyflow brand was created and launched earlier this year. Our key goals all along have been to encourage people to register as early as possible once registration opens, and to drive people to the merseyflow website which is the quickest and easiest way of registering. This way, we will avoid a last minute rush and more people will benefit from discounted crossings as soon as the Mersey Gateway Bridge opens in the autumn.

The early results are promising, and we’re using Google Data Studio to provide real time information and analysing the impact closely as we move forward to ensure our campaign is engaging people and the online registration process is customer friendly and effective.

Thanks for reading

Chris