The FPS team has been working on a story for new client, Royal London, looking into the future of funerals and the possibility of live-streaming when you can’t attend in person. The team conducted consumer research to understand the appetite for this service and spoke with 50 funeral directors/crematoria to find out whether it is growing in popularity. We found that a third of us have had to miss a funeral yet over half of us would rather miss a funeral than live-stream. However, it is growing in popularity slowly – with millennials most likely to live-stream and funeral directors seeing an increase in people demanding this service. It might not be for everyone but it is certainly becoming an option for the future! A very niche but thought provoking topic that proved a hit with the Daily Telegraph, the Sun, consumer sites such as Refinery29, even global recognition by The New York Post and also picked up by Press Association, syndicated across over 150 regional news outlets.
This week saw the E+I team introduce Hitachi’s humanoid robot EMIEW3 to the BBC. It’s the first time the robot, which can autonomously approach people and offer them help, has visited the UK.
A global reel from H+K including Jess Walsh, Larry Krutchik (LA), Claire Mackenzie and Martin Briand (Canada), were very proud to support the World Pancreatic Coalition’s annual meeting in Montreal this week with lively workshops to explore how to transform outcomes for patients.
The bank holiday weekend was a busy one for the sports and partnership marketing team. We were on the ground at no less than three events for our clients. First of all, the best Pro Evolution Soccer players from all over Europe descended on Liverpool for the second European Regional Final at Anfield. The gamers, who had been competing in the online PES League mode since February to earn their place, battled it out for cash prizes including $20k for the winner and a place at the World Finals at the end of May. H+K was on the ground managing European media from five countries as they followed the progress of their local competitors.
Next up for the sports team, The FA People’s Cup national finals in Birmingham. The FA People’s Cup is the governing body’s biggest amateur grassroots competition with 6,500 teams covering sixteen categories from under 14s to veterans, disability categories and walking football. Over a two day celebration the teams who had progressed through two rounds of local heats battled it out to be named champions of each category. H+K were again on the ground to manage media and interview the winning teams to create sixteen individual press tool kits for local press plus a national tool kit.
Finally, also in Birmingham, the Great Run Series kicked off for 2017. In 2016 H+K introduced Duracell as a partner of the Great Run Series, bringing in pacemakers for the first time and having those pace makers dressed as Duracell bunnies. In Birmingham, former Olympic heptathlete Kelly Sotherton joined the pacemakers with H+K managing media interviews with Kelly. The interviews required careful management in a week in which the athlete drew headlines for being retrospectively given a bronze medal following doping convictions for her competitors in Beijing. Content created on the ground at the 10k race went down a storm and was a great start to a second year of a partnership which was nominated for a Sport Industry Award in 2016.