22 Mar East Yorkshire marketing agency wins contract for festival to celebrate life of remarkable Hull woman
A locally-based national marketing and PR agency has beaten off competition from 14 other local agencies to be appointed to work on the Amy Johnson Festival.
Headquartered in Anlaby, East Yorkshire, Mercury Group will lead on an intensive six month campaign to raise the profile of both the festival itself and public art project A Moth for Amy, which dozens of local businesses have already pledged support for.
A festival of local, national and international significance, the Amy Johnson Festival and A Moth for Amy will mark the 75th anniversary of the death of Hull’s flying heroine.
Born in the city in 1903, Amy Johnson CBE was one of the most inspirational women of the twentieth century. She was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia and set a string of other records throughout her career.
Amy Johnson Festival will mark this anniversary and celebrate Amy’s life, achievements and legacy with an ambitious international programme of the arts and engineering sciences appealing to all interests and ages.
Rick Welton, festival director, said: “The festival presents an exciting opportunity for us to mark Amy’s achievements and bring her legacy back to the fore, as well as acting as a high impact precursor to Hull’s forthcoming UK City of Culture status in 2017.
“The appointment of an agency which demonstrated the ability to ensure we can spread the word as far and as wide as possible, given the international significance of Amy’s story, was always a major objective.
“We worked closely with our Board and the Hull 2017 team on this important tender and subsequent selection process, in order to ensure we all had the confidence in the chosen agency to achieve our ambitious results.
“Mercury went above and beyond in terms of demonstrating both their knowledge of Amy’s life story and their creative ideas in relation to keeping Amy’s story alive 75 years after her death and engaging businesses along the way. Their passion for the project was evident and we are delighted to be working with a team that has specialist experience in its field.”
Mercury’s consumer division was launched in 2013 in response to demand from destinations seeking support with their marketing, with particular emphasis on driving footfall to city centres and public venues such as shopping centres, festivals and events.
Now, the Mercury team works with shopping centres and other destinations as far afield as London, Manchester, Oxford and Bromborough, as well as closer to home in Hull, Bridlington, York and Huddersfield. The company’s strategic communications arm continues to represent multi-national energy, offshore oil and gas companies, rail businesses, as well as a multitude of FTSE 100 companies and high profile SMEs.
Kelly Taylor, Mercury Group’s managing director, said: “We are delighted to have been selected to work on such a meaningful piece of work in our hometown.
“As we are increasingly being asked to work on projects further afield, which means our team is venturing out of the region on a daily basis in order to deliver projects across the UK, it is a privilege for us to return to the city to work on the Amy Johnson Festival and A Moth for Amy.
“Our focus will not only be on raising the profile of the festival on a local, national and international platform, but also in supporting with liaising with those businesses who have pledged their support for this exciting festival and its associated arts programme, in order to ensure they reap the benefits of being on board.”