Ding Dong! It’s January 2025

Read on for the latest comings, goings, and exciting news from the team at Front Door Comms.

This month, we wrapped up another year for Christmas at Bute Park, and we couldn’t be more chuffed with how media coverage has gone during the 2024 run. Its organisers, From The Fields, are a team that we look forward to working with every year (even though it means talking about Christmas in July) and this has been our most successful year yet. And now that all the lights are packed away and we can look back at the 2024 season, we were really happy to have achieved:

• 80 feature articles in print and online
• A PR reach of over 400 million readers
• National coverage including The Times, Cosmopolitan, Metro, Daily Star, Mirror Online,  Daily Express, Closer mag, OK! and more.
• Over 50 influencers, celebs and VIPs who attended the event, as well as broadcast interviews with ITV Wales, BBC Radio Wales, Capital and Greatest Hits

Considering this year’s trail had to contend with not one but two storms, amber weather warnings and a very cold snap, we’re really over the moon with how the campaign has gone and it was so lovely to see everyone turning out – even if it meant wellies and waterproofs!

Elsewhere, anyone watching the Six Nations this year might be interested in our latest campaign for Lottoland, which asked the nation to put together their ideal squad ahead of this year’s first game between Wales and France (the less said about that the better).

You can take the quiz here in the Mirror, or the Express, as well as in lots of regional publications including Wales Online, Manchester Evening News and the Irish Sun. We also asked who the nation’s all time top players were, with Johnny Wilkinson, Gareth Edwards and JPR Williams taking the top three spots!

This month, Front Door also helped facilitate the launch event for a new community platform at the Pierhead Building, Cardiff Bay this January alongside client Sacyr UK. Acorn and Sacyr, the consortium building the new Velindre Cancer Centre (nVCC), has launched a free online community platform to provide a wealth of resources, collaboration and opportunities for local residents.

The platform, which is accessible to all and offers services to anyone who is aged 14 and over, was officially launched by Julie Morgan MS, the Senedd member for Cardiff North – where the new Velindre Cancer Centre is being built. You can read more about the new community platform here.

Another of Front Door Comms’ lovely clients, leading sealants and cosmetic repairs provider SD Team, has been in the press this week after becoming the headline sponsor for Beicio Cymru’s (formerly Welsh Cycling) CymruVelo Track Cup.

The event saw top-tier elite and junior cyclists compete against each other at The Geraint Thomas National Velodrome of Wales from the 23^rd to 25^th January. SD has been a long-time supporter of Beicio Cymru and has sponsored a number of its youth teams and events over the years as a means of setting up the next generation of world class riders to represent Wales on the national stage.

You can read more about the event and SD’s sponsorship in the South Wales Argus, Business News Wales and the South Wales Chronicle.

And from one regional story to the next, it was also a stellar month for client Orbis Education and Care, whose autism care school, Summergil House, has had a significant expansion at its site in Presteigne, Powys.

Thanks to new planning permission, the school can now increase its enrolment from 22 students, when it first opened in 2016, to 50 children and young people, more than doubling its current capacity.

The school has also been allowed to lower its age registration from five to four, enabling younger children to benefit from the specialist early years education provided at Summergil. You can read more in the Brecon and Radnor Express, County Times and Care Talk Business this month.

Back to the national news and our client MyVoucherCodes secured a whopping 200 pieces of coverage for its story on Sunshine Saturday, the day when more than a third of Brits will book flights for holidays in the hopes of grabbing a discounted getaway.

Its survey revealed that some 39% of shoppers were planning to book a holiday on the 4^th January, and interestingly a huge 65% of people in Northern Ireland would be trying to bag a break on the day! We were thrilled to find coverage rolling in to 200 publications on Saturday morning, including this lovely piece in the Mail on Sunday.

In design news, January also saw the completion of a long-standing project for civil and structural engineers Cambria Consulting! Front Door Rosie has been busy creating a company brochure for prospective employees that highlights everything you might want to know about Cambria, from the core hours to the coffee. It’s been an ambitious project that’s culminated in a finished design that we’re all dead proud of, and it’s been very rewarding to hand this over to the client for the final time!

Finally, it’s been a great month for new clients here at Front Door Comms, as we’ll be working with not one but three lovely new teams from January onwards. A big welcome to adventure trekking experts EverTrek, coworking space Desg and legendary Welsh brewer SA Brains! We can’t wait to get started on our first campaigns.