School’s out for summer – but it’s still busy in the PR world!

Another early Sunday morning catch up with the blog – how some people find time to blog all the time I’ll never know! It’s been such a hectic roller-coaster at PR HQ this month and although probably one of my most successful periods also the busiest and most exhausting.

Firstly, my website www.eurydicepr.co.uk has had a much-needed facelift and now looks stunning, thanks to Hilary at HKS Design. I'm now including all links and cuttings on a special press page so I can boast from the hilltops about all the press coverage that's been occurring!


Caroline Duffy Miss Earth England on the Natural Empathy Selfridges stand

Photograph courtesy of Albert Constantin





On 2nd July we had the exclusive Selfridges launch for natural skincare range Natural Empathy, complete with an appearance from gorgeous Miss Earth England Caroline Duffy, styled ethically by the magnificent Lupe Castro and make up by Lucy Friend – this really made the event come alive! We had some great press response who love the family background and rapeseed oil story. The hero ingredient in this British-formulated range is Northumberland grown cold-pressed – by hand! – rapeseed oil, which is in fact much richer than Mediterranean olive oil and has incredible anti-ageing properties. Just spending one day in the store under those bright lights and among the bustle was hard enough (especially in heels!), but the Natural Empathy team spent two intensive weeks on the stand in the main beauty hall, generating sales and customers, and a great deal of interest from other shops keen to stock the range. The range is now on sale in the Living Beauty section of the store until at least October and hopefully beyond. Apparently Princesses came away with the whole range and the management of Selfridges themselves requested the products for their suites where they entertain the rich and famous – not surprising considering the authentic Britishness of the products and the beauty of the packaging.
















It’s also been a very successful month for natural anti-insect products incognito, who launched their new after sun moisturiser recently and who are appearing on this week’s Dragon’s Den (29 July 09) BBC2 at 9pm – certainly worth a watch! Coverage for the products has appeared in several mainstream titles this month including Best, Prima, the Daily Mail, Kindred Spirit, Healthy magazine and Lifescape. I’m certainly finding my subscription to response source alerts paying off and despite the size of the investment and the huge amount of extra work monitoring up to 50 detailed alerts per day, the benefit is certainly worth the bloodshot eyes and tetchy personality!















Now it’s the school holidays I was hoping to scale down a bit but the pressure is now on with the Daisy Green London press launch, including the launch of the Enamore Daisy bra, to take place on 15 September. I’m delighted to now be on board helping with PR for this fab online magazine - see www.daisygreenmagazine.co.uk and looking forward to doing what I do best – organising a party!!!

I’ve also been working with the inspirational Sarah Dawnay, who has just set up a fantastic website for working parents – juggling home and family with an ethical business. Mothers of Innovation www.moixx.com is a great resource for families looking for ethical and ingenious solutions to all sorts of child-related problems and already has a following amongst a few famous mums including Amanda Holden and Melanie C (never underestimate the power of a celebrity endorsement!)

My new Sika dresses have arrived – handmade and ethical, Lupe Castro personally picked out the best designs and colours and I can honestly say that I feel a true diva when wearing them! Lupe also recently styled myself and my daughter for a photo shoot with Good Housekeeping magazine, which not only was a fun experience for us all but was fantastic for Lupe to introduce mainstream stylists to a few new designers and items which they may not have seen before – we can turn the world ethical bit by bit if we all work together!

As we enter August and that notorious journalistic Silly Season where even the dullest product and uncreative PR can get a few column inches somewhere, it’s all systems go preparing PR stories and coverage for autumn/winter issues and dare I say the word – Christmas! Yes magazines are already putting together wish lists and product reviews for their Christmas issues and it’s time for me to start thinking about placing my clients’ products according to autumnal colour schemes, winter skin products, warm clothing and festive gifts, when really all I want to do is put on a bikini and soak up the rays in my back garden while the children have a splash in the paddling pool!

Have a lovely summer everybody!

Don’t forget to watch incognito on Dragon’s Den this Wednesday 29th July at 9pm on BBC2 or watch it again on BBC iplayer.

Best face forward

It’s been a busy few weeks here in my little bustling office … I’m so delighted to welcome new clients on board: incognito, Pure Nuff Stuff, Eco Hotels of the World and Devidoll, as well as having some great response from new press campaigns for buyOrganics and Natural Spa Supplies, who both this week offered journalists super challenges – to turn themselves and their men organic, and to swap a week of regular showering for a good old strip wash, in a bid to save hundreds of litres of water. Both slightly off-beat concepts but we had a fabulous response, and it’s so heartening to see the press taking up the challenge and supporting ways we can all try to make our lives that little bit more sustainable and less toxic for our fabulous planet.

In the same vein, I am also really pleased to be on board as a keen supporter for the Green Party, particularly in supporting Rupert Read, who is running for MEP for the East of England. I am even contemplating a foray into the world of green politics myself, so more on that when it’s all finalised!

But in amongst all the success, thrills and excitement, I’ve had a stonking cold, and having had to cancel meetings and glue myself to my desk for the past few days, I’d started to feel very skanky and slummy indeed. Managing to bung on some old trackies and pop on a pair of shades and hide behind the steering wheel for the school run, my haggard, red-nosed, bloodshot-eyed appearance is a far cry from the usual well-heeled, pouting PR goddess that I prefer to be known as…. particularly embarrassing in view of the fact that a good proportion of my clients and journalist contacts are key movers and shakers in the beauty and fashion world!! So this morning I finally decided as my tired, pale face looked out at me from the mirror, enough is enough!!!

But what to do? How do you go about perking yourself up when you feel like, well, to put it mildy, a bag of (insert your own derogatory expletive here!), without resorting to an entire pot of coffee, cans of Red Bull and the occasional dose of Rescue Remedy?

Of course, the answer is makeup. Yes, a rendezvous with your cosmetic bag really is the answer! When you look good, you feel good, and putting on a new, fresh face using cosmetic products can have a huge influence on the way you feel inside. But of course, there’s a flip side to this. What you put onto your skin can also affect your body in a different way – and now of course I’m talking about toxins in beauty products.

Regular, non-organic cosmetics, as with skincare products, usually contain a host of synthetic ingredients, mainly preservatives, which quite frankly aren’t all that wholesome when you consider how much of it gets slapped onto skin and sucked into all manner of pores and orifices. For example, the average woman will actually consume several kilos (yes, kilos!) of lipstick and lipgloss during her lifetime - yummy! - and considering the fact that most lip products contain parabens and phlalates as important preservatives, makes you wonder what the accumulative effect of all these chemical nasties could actually be?

Toxic overload has been implicated in several unwelcome health conditions – not only hormone-related cancers, but quite interestingly in ME sufferers, who sadly often find their only respite from their debilitating conditions is a complete swap to organic and natural foods, clothing, personal care products and household cleaning products. Already down in the dumps thanks to their illness, putting on makeup can be a welcome solution to cheer sufferers up, but with symptoms exacerbated by the hormones and manmade ingredients in skincare products and cosmetics, such a treat often falls by the wayside. Choosing organic, natural cosmetics can really be the answer; not only safer and gentler, but usually not tested on animals and often mainly vegan, ie. containing no animal products whatsoever (did you know that mascara and lipsticks for example, often contain ingredients derived from the byproducts of slaughtered animals), and with just as stunning results.

My favourite organic makeup brands – available from buyOrganics of course! (got to get a plug in – I’m shameless!)– are Nvey Eco and Inika. Inika in particular does a spectacular range of eyeshadows and gorgeous lip glosses, and having been a Clinique girl for many years until I finally saw the light, can honestly say the quality of the two are easily comparable. I love the Nvey foundation range, easily on a par with most mid-range department store brands and priced similarly. Perfect also for teenage girls and pregnant women, as well as chemotherapy and ME sufferers, due to the lack of toxins which may have more effect on these groups of people, organic makeup can not only make you look good on the outside but keep your entire body and immune system healthy as well.

Safe skincare and top quality cosmetics are available from buyOrganics, and Pure Nuff Stuff offers the most reasonably priced, safest and deliciously smelling and feeling range of organic skincare I’ve seen in a very long while.

So now although I’m still sneezing and coughing and wearing those old trackies, I feel so much better inside, with my lips gorgeously glossed and my skin flawless and glowing.... ready to face the world safely and beautifully!