New business Tickety Boo

Ottery PR is just Tickety-Boo

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Ottery St Mary is a very happening place, so it seems! I’ve been providing ‘Ottery PR’ for Otter Nurseries and Robin Rea at Rusty Pig for a couple of years now, as well as supporting the Volunteer Inn. I also handle the occasional bit of PR for the spicy Samosa Lady, Tina Chauhan-Challis.

My newest OSM client is Tickety-Boo. This is a fantastic project to revitalise the old bakery in the heart of the town with a coffee shop, playzone and events room.

Tickety-Boo is coming together fast, so it’s a bit of a rollercoaster ride at the moment. I’m overseeing the new website, setting up social media, sorting out photography, working on posters, sourcing balloons and helping to organise the opening event on August 13th. Phew!

Ottery businesses

What impresses me about all these Ottery businesses is their commitment not only to their own business but other local businesses too, as well as the community. They seem to have grasped the fact that if people work together for the good of a community, everyone wins. Otter Nurseries was headline sponsor for the Ottery Food & Families Festival and offers fundraising parking for the Tar Barrels. Rusty Pig, Samosa Lady and Volunteer Inn support the Carnival Committee that organises the Tar Barrels each year, as well as being involved in the food festival.

The ethos behind Tickety-Boo is to give the local community something really good to enjoy. No fried food here, everything is to be home-cooked by the talented chef, Dave using locally sourced ingredients. The playzone has been hand-built and the party room murals painstakingly painted by hand. The coffee shop also has a bespoke-made feel. There’s a lot of time and effort going into this.

It’s a privilege to work with such a vibrant community. The community Facebook page ‘Ottery Matters’ is always ablaze with opinions, grumbles, lost dogs (and once a donkey), concerns and celebrations. It’s one of the most engaged pages I’ve seen, and very entertaining to read.

I’m looking forward to the launch of Tickety-Boo and the opportunity for more Ottery PR!

The black pudding team

Cooking on blood – PR for black pudding

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PR is sometimes seen as a glamorous job – think awards ceremonies, schmoozing, freebies. In fact, for most of us it’s far more belt and braces, and occasionally in my case, gory.

PR for black pudding

It can be quite a challenge, as someone who is pretty much a vegetarian, to work with a business that’s basically all about meat. However, knowing as I do that the meat is sourced from animals raised only with the highest welfare standards, no factory farming here, I am 100% behind my client, chef Robin Rea of Rusty Pig.

So when Robin told me he was working with Dr Jan Davison to try out eight traditional black pudding recipes, some from the 18th century, I dropped by with my camera and notepad.

PR for black puddingBlack pudding, you may know, is basically made from blood. I watched as jugs of blood were poured into bowls with various other ingredients, mixed by hand and put to simmer on the stove. Delightful.

What was really interesting was the basis for the tests. Jan is delivering a paper to the Oxford Food & Cookery Symposium looking at how offal was once used for dishes for the wealthiest people in the land, including the Royal Family. I learned how ingredients such as ambergris, rosewater and penny royal were used in black pudding. And how one recipe called for a porpoise (which I’m pleased to say was a recipe not used).

This fascinating story was picked up in the local press, allowing for the promotion of Rusty Pig’s ‘Bourbon & Black’ event, where diners will be able to try out the black puddings. I’m going along, but Robin has promised to make me a veggie black pudding for the occasion.

This is the one and only occasion that I might be justified in writing the words, ‘bloody PR’!

Don’t hide your light under a bushel!

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PR is all about good news (most of the time). In Devon, we love to celebrate positive stories, and the county is full of people doing fantastic things in business, community and charity. However, sometimes people don’t realise they’re sitting on a great story!

Two of my clients in East Devon almost missed the opportunity for a shout out this summer, not realising the PR gold they were sitting on. Luckily, social media did its thing, and I was alerted to both stories by comments on Facebook and Twitter.

In the first instance, Otter Nurseries received an SOS call from celebrity gardener, Alan Titchmarsh who was in desperate need of coastal plants for a garden makeover in North Devon he was doing for his programme, Love Your Garden.

alan titchmarshThe makeover was for a man who had lost his sight after an aneurism, and Sir Alan had been let down by a supplier. He had rung garden centres across Devon before calling Otter Nurseries. Carla, the young lady who took his call, couldn’t believe it was him at first! Alan was delighted when Otter Nurseries was able to fulfil his requirement and sent his production team to collect the plants. When they arrived, they also had a wish list for lots of other supplies, which staff managed to get together for them in record time. A great good news story, I thought – and local press agreed. Read it here.

I recently learned that I’d missed another lovely story from Otter Nurseries, where a female member of staff grabbed her tools and fixed a customer’s car right there in the garden centre’s car park!

Over in Ottery town centre, I’ve recently started working with chef Robin Rea of the Rusty Pig. Robin has a great business, combining an exclusive dining experience with a specialist butchers shop selling fantastic air-dried charcuterie. I noticed on GoldFacebook that Robin had been awarded Gold in the Taste of the West awards. When I asked him if he’d created any publicity around it, he said that he’d put it on social media…. A couple of hours and one press release later, the local papers again were delighted to print the story of his success. Read about it here.

The moral of this blog is to tell your PR agency whenever something good happens. I’ve lectured (in the nicest possible way) both the above clients not to dismiss anything, but get in touch asap. After all, it’s my job to get their good news out there and there’s nothing I like better!

Festival-itis!

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This week I’ve mainly been working hard to promote two community events ‒ the Honiton Sausage & Cider Festival on May 3 and the Ottery St Mary Food & Families Festival on June 14.

The fabulous Exeter Food & Drink Festival, which I’ve had nothing to do with (!) is already underway this weekend. I’m hoping to drop in on Sunday to sample the delights of the South West’s finest fare and see some our finest chefs show off their cookery skills.

There is such a great community spirit in Devon. People work hard to support each other’s businesses and to celebrate the very best in their neighbourhood.

At the Sausage & Cider Festival a local producer is creating a Devon Freewheelers banger, in honour of the charity that the festival is supporting. Personally I can’t wait to sample the many locally produced zyders whilst being serenaded by the Wurzels. Yes, the Wurzels. We know how to party…

As Devon Freewheelers is my charity of the year, I’ve been helping out with PR for the event. Our local paper, the Midweek Herald has been amazing in its support both of the charity and the festival. I hope we’ll be seeing quite a few members of the press next weekend when Honiton really lets its hair down!

OFFFJust under six miles west of Honiton, the Ottery St Mary Food & Families Festival had its inaugural outing last year. I chanced upon the festival when I popped into the town on a sunny June afternoon with my son, returning home with lots of lovely nibbles, including an amazing Coppa (cured pork) that Josh loved (expensive tastes, my boy) and a somewhat lighter purse.

This year I’m helping to promote the festival, pinging out press releases and media invites and negotiating a media sponsor. The response has been so positive. Devon media folk do like to celebrate along with the community! I might even be supplying a busker or two if I can persuade the Coppa lover to take to the streets of the festival with his two band members.

Now, does that make me a manager, and do I deserve a cut of their takings?