Muckle Media, the creative communications PR agency, is welcoming the boutique hotel group Sonas Collection, to its 2024 roster of hospitality clients, following a period of sustained growth for the agency.

The dedicated food, drink and hospitality PR team, ‘Taste’, which has been part of the Muckle Media Group since 2022, will be providing PR support to new client Sonas Collection following a competitive pitch process.

Taste has been brought on board by Sonas at an exciting time of expansion for their west coast hospitality portfolio, as it launches its first venue on the Scottish mainland.

Sonas has invested in PR support from the agency as a part of its growth plans, tasking Muckle Media with the promotion of Knipoch House Hotel (pictured), the group’s newest property opening in Oban this March following a £1.3 million renovation.

In addition to the launch of Knipoch House, the agency will be providing ongoing communications and media relations support across the Collection’s three other hotel destinations, located on the Isle of Skye; Skeabost House Hotel, Duisdale House Hotel, and Toravaig House Hotel.

Founded by Anne Gracie-Gunn and her late husband Ken Gunn from their passion for showcasing Gaelic language and culture, the beauty and accessibility of the Scottish coastline, Sonas Collection has become known for the exceptional hospitality the hotels provide through personal touches, exceptional food and drink and a deeply dedicated team.

Anne Gracie-Gunn, Owner and Director of Sonas Collection, said “We are delighted as a family as we move forward with our strong Management team into Argyll with the launch of Knipoch House Hotel. The Hotel, admired by myself, over many years, from afar as a potential possibility …  ‘One Day!’ With the support and expertise of the Muckle Media Team we look forward to a very successful venture whilst delivering the highest quality on every level under the expert guidance of Andreas Maszczyk our Group General Manager.”

Linsay Brown, Director and head of Taste at Muckle Media, commented: “We have had an incredible year so far within the Taste team, and we are delighted to welcome the Sonas Collection onto our hospitality roster.

“It’s great to see our exciting growth plans for the team coming to fruition with four new destination hotels. We can’t wait to showcase our enthusiasm and creative ideas and get started on our plans with the Sonas team.”

Muckle Media, the creative communications agency, is celebrating success after being recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ 2024 by Great Place To Work, ranking 41st out of 100 in the award’s small business category. 

A prestigious accolade, with Great Place To Work being the global authority on workplace culture, the agency received the award at the Best Workplaces Awards at London’s Grosvenor House, hosted by comedian Katherine Ryan.  

Recognised for their commitment to work culture and the organisation’s values, the award factored in the implementation of a four-day work week in September 2023, alongside flexible working practices and the agency’s B-corp status.  

Nathalie Agnew, founder and managing director of Muckle Media, said: “Through our BrightCareers.Realised. programme we are committed to helping our team thrive in their careers while also ensuring a healthy work-life balance. We’ve done this in part through our flexible working policy, and our introduction of a four-day week and we are delighted to now be officially recognised as one of the UK’s best workplaces.” 

This recognition follows Muckle Media’s recent double win at the Edinburgh Chamber Annual Business Awards for ‘Employer of the Year’ and ‘Mid-sized Business of the Year’, alongside ‘Agency Employer Brand of the Year 2023’ at the Marketing Society Scotland’s annual awards. 

This award is our third from Great Place To Work over the past 12 months as we also featured in the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women™ 2024 and UK’s Best Workplaces for Development™ 2024 lists.

Ranked amongst the top 20 for UK’s Best Workplaces for Women™ 2024 acknowledged our commitment to ensuring a reasonable balance of women and men across the organisation; removing barriers to women’s career advancement; and creating workplaces where all employees, regardless of gender, can flourish.

Muckle Media, the creative communications agency, is celebrating success after taking home two awards at this year’s Edinburgh Chamber Annual Business Awards.

A prestigious accolade within the Edinburgh business community, the agency received the ‘Mid-sized Business of the Year’ award alongside ‘Employer of the Year’ for its business achievements. Aligning with the award’s ‘Grow, Scale, Succeed’ theme, Muckle Media has witnessed a period of sustained growth within the past year, including the expansion of its B2B and Corporate Communications team.

Additionally presented with ‘Employer of the Year’, the business was celebrated for its distinctive work culture and values, including the implementation of a four-day work week in September 2023 and its B-corp status.

The event was hosted at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, with the 13^th Edinburgh Chamber Annual awards set to commemorate business leaders, influencers and entrepreneurs, sponsored by LNER, to celebrate Edinburgh’s talented business sector.

Nathalie Agnew, founder and Managing Director of Muckle Media, said: “Muckle Media has gone through a period of change within the past year, including the expansion of our B2B and Corporate Communications team, and the introduction of a four-day working week. Our values are important to us here at Muckle, and it’s great to see them recognised.

It’s an honour to be recognised alongside so many accomplished businesses in Edinburgh, and we’re thrilled to be taking home ‘Mid-sized Business of the Year’ and ‘Employer of the Year’ for our work.”

The two awards join Muckle Media’s recent ‘Agency Employer Brand of the Year 2023’ at the Marketing Society Scotland’s annual awards.

Muckle Media holds offices in four of Scotland’s major cities: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness.

Michael Scobbie joins as Head of B2B and Corporate Communications and Hannah Blackford as Senior Account Manager

Creative communications agency Muckle Media has welcomed two new employees, Michael Scobbie and Hannah Blackford, following a period of continued growth. The pair will join the agency’s B2B, crisis and corporate communications specialist team, with Scobbie joining as Head of B2B and Corporate Communications and Blackford being appointed as Senior Account Manager.

Michael Scobbie joins the agency from Scottish SPCA where he was Head of Communications and Marketing, bringing a wealth of experience in strategic communications and reputation management.  Under his leadership, the team won ‘In-House PR Team of the Year’ at the 2021 CIPR PRide Awards in Scotland.

Hannah Blackford joins the agency as Senior Account Manager from a London-based strategic communications agency, where she led campaigns for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and AstraZenca. Blackford additionally has seven years’ experience in account management, with a wealth of communications experience in industries including the third sector, transport and renewable energy.

Commenting on his new role, Michael Scobbie said: “I’m over the moon to join the team. Muckle has gone from strength to strength in recent years, as evidenced by the slew of awards in 2023 for industry-leading communications campaigns.”  

Hannah Blackford added: “I’m delighted to be joining Muckle Media’s B2B and corporate communications team. It is a business that has strong values, a really talented team, works with interesting and important clients and looks after its people. I’m really looking forward to helping them drive new and existing client growth.”

Commenting on the two new team members, Muckle Media Founder and MD, Nathalie Agnew, said: “We are really excited to welcome Michael and Hannah to the Muckle team. The B2B, crisis and corporate communications team are going through an exciting period of growth and I look forward to working alongside them to continue to deliver award winning work.”

Muckle Media saw a period of continued growth throughout 2023, with corporate new business client wins including charity Culture & Business Scotland and more-than-profit organisation Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland. Hannah and Michael will work closely to build on Muckle Media’s B2B, crisis and corporate communications services.

Muckle Media was recently awarded ‘PR Consultancy of the Year’ at Scotland’s CIPR PRide Awards, and ‘Agency Employer Brand of the Year’ at the Marketing Society Scotland’s annual awards.

For more information on Muckle Media and the services we offer please get in touch at [email protected]

Have you heard that AI will break new ground in 2024? So have we – but we know that next year is going to be big one in lots of different ways.  As we wrap up 2023 and look to 2024, we’re thinking about what we can expect and hope for in line with our core values of being kind, getting results and making the world a better place.

Be Kind
America’s oldest dictionary, Merriam-Webster, named ‘authentic’ as their word of the year for 2023. But what does ‘authenticity’ actually mean?  In a PR and marketing context, we know that people want to see brands display their ‘human’ side. We think that next year will see consumers continue to place more importance on connecting with brands on a genuine, personal level. As an agency we’ll also continue to encourage authenticity within our workforce by nurturing everyone’s individual talents and allowing our team to be themselves at work – and hopefully we’ll see more and more organisations do the same.

Get results
Although we expect the human aspect of PR to be a focus next year, the advancing role of technology certainly isn’t to be ignored – so as an industry, we need to find ways to use it to our advantage. There are so many tools out there that can help us, but we’ll need to evolve to keep up with the brave new world we’ll find ourselves in. For us as an agency, we’ll be making the most of the technology on offer to help us think outside the box in terms of getting great results for our clients.

Leaving the world in a better place
Since we became a B Corp in 2022, we’ve seen more and more organisations become interested in doing the same. Being certified as a B Corp means that organisations have high standards to live up to. B Corps value social and environmental sustainability, accountability, and transparency – qualities that are more important than ever as we go into a year that looks like it will be shaped by the climate crisis, the spread of misinformation and political and economic uncertainty. We’re expecting to see more businesses look to demonstrate their commitment to these values – and we’ll be continuing to put our B Corp values into action too, as we aspire to have a positive impact on the world around us.

So as 2023 comes to a close, we’re looking forward to seeing where the coming year takes us – with the knowledge that our core values will help us to navigate whatever comes next.

Hybrid working has been a hot topic for a number of years, brought into sharp focus by the Covid pandemic.

Here at Muckle, we are proud to embrace a hybrid working model, with our team working across Scotland, from Aberdeen to Inverness, Glasgow to Edinburgh, and even a farm.

Hybrid working allows us to have the best of both worlds, an office base when we need it, and the flexibility to be at home as well.

Our senior account manager Jess Murphy, who is based in the Granite City, spoke to the Press and Journal to share her insights on how hybrid working works for her (and her cat Merida too!)

From making sure to keep active, remaining connected to colleagues, and other thoughts on the benefits and balance of hybrid working, read more here: *link to P and J story – https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen-aberdeenshire/6265642/hybrid-working-wellbeing-aberdeen/ )

Muckle Media, the creative communications agency, is full of PRide after taking home four awards at Scotland’s CIPR Pride awards.

The agency received gold awards for environmental campaign of the year, integrated campaign of the year and PR consultancy of the year and a silver award for consumer relations campaign of the year.

One of the industry’s most sought-after awards, PR consultancy of the year is awarded to an agency who has had an incredible year in terms of financial performance, client campaigns, business strategy and all-round achievement.

The other categories are judged against a thorough criteria which considers campaign brief, objectives and budget, ideas research and planning, strategy, creativity and innovation, delivery of tactics and measurement, evaluation and impact.

Muckle’s silver award win for consumer relations campaign of the year was secured for its work with Moray Council and Stagecoach Bluebird, delivering a campaign to encourage locals and visitors of the Moray region to utilise public bus routes. The same campaign also secured this year’s gold award for integrated campaign of the year, for successfully implementing a multi-channel approach to reach target audiences.

The environmental campaign of the year was awarded for Muckle’s work with Highlands Rewilding, to promote a three-month fundraising and crowdfunding campaign. With Muckle’s support, the crowdfund exceeded 50% of the initial target within the first three weeks of the crowdfund going live and by the end of the campaign, the crowdfund stretch- target was exceeded, with a closing total of £1.2 million raised from over 725 citizen rewilders.

The agency was shortlisted for a further 5 awards in recognition on its industry leading work including; best use of content, low budget campaign, public sector campaign, not-for-profit campaign, and healthcare and/or wellbeing campaign of the year.

Muckle Media Founder Nathalie Agnew said: “The agency has gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years while we’ve been in a period of rapid growth which has seen us bring on new team members as we’ve built our client base exponentially.  We’ve focused our efforts on making Muckle Media one of the best communications agencies to work for and with so I’m delighted to see the efforts of the team being recognised.

Following our campaign with the Loch Ness Centre this summer, Alastair Campbell called Nessie Scotland’s ‘Golden Goose’ on his ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast, saying it was ‘PR of the highest order’, and even gave the Centre’s General Manager, Paul Nixon, a shoutout for his fantastic yellow suit. Admittedly, it felt nice to get praise from someone like Alistair Campbell, but what exactly did we do to deserve it?

Following a £1.5 million investment in the Loch Ness Centre and Deepscan cruises from leading UK tourist attraction manager Continuum Attractions, we were tasked with delivering global coverage to bring tourists to the centre.

Loch Ness Centre were arranging ‘The Quest’ – a weekend of events at the end of August arranged in partnership with Loch Ness Exploration’s (LNE), an independent and voluntary research team, for volunteers to search the famous waters of Loch Ness and uncover its mysteries.

We knew there is always interest in Nessie, but we wanted to make sure we had something that would capture the attention of the world.

After research, we found out that we could position ‘The Quest’ as the largest search in over 50 years with new technology being used to search the waters of the Loch – this was the hook we were looking for.

Through strong media relations when we launched ‘The Quest’ we secured significant global media coverage.

One week from the event, we drafted a further press release calling for Monster Hunters across the globe to sign up and watch the live web cams of the Loch over the weekend, and search for anything unexplained.

Over ‘The Quest’ weekend, we managed media invites and the media schedule pre and during the weekend, with media on site from the Washington Post to German broadcasters ZDF and Australia’s ABC.

Finally, Following the weekend, we followed up with media once again with details of findings from the weekend, keeping the legend of Nessie well and truly alive.

Over a 4-week period, we generated over 2,300 pieces of coverage with media secured across the globe, including New York Post, Washington Post, BBC, and The Guardian and over 192 pieces of broadcast coverage including Good Morning America, BBC Radio 2, BBC Breakfast and Sky News.

During the period, over 6,000 people visited the Quest part of the Loch Ness Centre website, and over 200 people volunteered to take part in the hunt arriving from countries including the US, Canada, Poland, and Denmark, and over 300 people from across the world watched the live stream.

So what can we learn this?

It’s not every day you get a world-famous beast as part of your PR arsenal, but there are lessons to learn, we took an event and elevated it with a key hook on being the ‘biggest’, we also created several story moments to keep up momentum, and maybe most importantly we made the event open to everyone with a live stream making the event truly global.

If you want to hear how we can help elevate your PR and stories, get in touch. And if you want to hear what Alastair Campbell had to say about the campaign, you can hear it here from 10.50:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6FDw1P3LZiiDlSMLZHojre?si=EjO6kYTLSsOREiiI7uhOSg

Creative communications agency Muckle Media’s team are celebrating awards success after winning ‘Growth Business of the Year’ at the Women’s Enterprise Scotland Awards 2023.

Taking place at Glasgow’s voco Grand Central Hotel, the ceremony recognised female business leaders across ten categories and was attended by BAFTA-award winning television journalist Kirsty Wark, who delivered the keynote speech.

Sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Growth Business of the Year Award celebrates women-led businesses which have achieved considerable growth and financial performance, as well as a solid understanding of creating and sustaining commercial success within the context of the markets they operate in.

Muckle Media founder and Managing Director Nathalie Agnew said: “Women’s Enterprise Scotland is doing invaluable work in championing women-owned and women-led enterprises, and it’s an honour to be recognised alongside so many accomplished female business leaders in Scotland. We’re thrilled to be taking home the Growth Business of the Year Award and extend our congratulations to all the finalists and winners at this year’s awards for their ambitious and innovative work”.

Along with the Growth Business of the Year accolade, Muckle is shortlisted for a host of prizes this awards season, including in four categories at the CIPR PRide awards.

Written by Chloe Ainslie

I joined Muckle Media for a three-week internship. As a recent graduate from Queen Margaret University, I was nervous but keen to start building up my professional skillset now that I was no longer a student.

Although I had graduated with a degree in Film and Media, I had never directly done anything in PR, and I couldn’t really tell you what it meant if you were to ask me at the start. Regardless, I was ready to start, and didn’t expect the experience to be as fulfilling and enjoyable as it was!

I took part in a range of tasks whilst at Muckle, such as, assisting with the launch of a new restaurant, doing deep dives into the food and drink industry and its community, drafting copy and more.

The work was one of the strongest aspects, challenging my tech and communications skills whilst teaching me about a range of different topics and companies. There was a sense of being ‘behind the scenes’ which made me feel very accomplished. But undoubtedly the best part was the people. I got to work with very kind, helpful and patient colleagues who helped me feel more confident as the weeks progressed. Some days would be slower than others and I could sometimes feel a bit shy about asking for more things to do but ultimately, I was met with warmth and helpfulness.

I am very happy I was given this opportunity to intern for Muckle Media. It was a rewarding and worthwhile experience that turned out to be the ideal start for professional life after university. I now have a better definition for PR from when I first started – sheer variety and surprisingly fun!

P.S – there’s an on-site barista, beer taps in the Edinburgh office AND it’s dog friendly. Easily the best workplace I’ve been to.