first direct has become the first UK bank to embrace social media with the launch of its new social media newsroom http://newsroom.firstdirect.com.
The move comes following the successful launch of the company’s presence on twitter.com earlier this year.
The social media newsroom borrows considerable amounts of its functions from the world of blogging, using social media sites such as Flickr and YouTube to “serve” content to the site and allowing users to share text, images and video across blogs and social networks.
Amanda Brown, PR and communications manager for first direct, explained the goals behind the site saying: “Increasingly, people are turning to online methods of media consumption and as a brand we have to go where the audience is. With the social media newsroom we wanted to create one central hub for all our communications online and we wanted to make those communications as portable and shareable online as possible.
“We create a lot of content that could add value to the conversations already going on online, the newsroom is a step on the way to engaging in that dialogue.”
The newsroom was created in collaboration with the social media specialist public relations consultancy Wolfstar, which created the initial concepts and provided ongoing consultancy throughout the project. These initial concepts were then designed and developed by specialist digital marketing agency MadeByPi into the final site for launch.
Stuart Bruce, managing director of Wolfstar commented: “first direct has always had a reputation for being a forward thinking company, and when we first started discussing the project we were delighted with their ambitions, particularly with their recognition that this was a primarily cultural rather than a technological shift. Wolfstar has now been working with first direct and MadeByPi for a considerable time and today’s launch represents a major step forward in the project.”
Chris Hemingway, creative director of MadeByPi added: “This has been a collaborative project and we are really pleased to have brought it to such a successful conclusion. The final product is a credit to a project characterised by the cohesive vision formed between the public relations and marketing team at first direct, ourselves and Wolfstar.”
Notes:
Useful URLs:
News room address: http://newsroom.firstdirect.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/first_direct
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/firstdirectuk
Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/firstdirect
first direct: www.firstdirect.com
MadeByPi: www.madebypi.co.uk
Wolfstar: www.wolfstarconsultancy.com
Media contacts:
Wolfstar
+44 (0)113 394 7960
Sam Oakley
samoakley@wolfstarconsultancy.com
first direct
+44 (0)113 276 6700
Amanda Brown
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