Last night, 80:20 spent an evening with the production team of BBC Television’s Fast Track travel programme. Fast Track is the Beeb’s most-watched travel show and has an enviable audience demographic, which is dominated by affluent senior executives and professionals. The evening gave a chance to hear directly from the editor on what the programme is presently looking for from companies and their PRs. A big thank you to the Fast Track team, who gave a very helpful and thorough briefing and were most generous with the legendary BBC plonk.

A new year and a new colleague for the 80:20 team. Transport and automotive specialist Nick Garton has started today as account director. Nick’s arrival couldn’t be better timed, as things are about to get even busier here, with work getting under way for new client Collinson Latitude, a loyalty marketing technology business. Nick has a full deck from day one, as he will be leading a number of client relationships and playing a vital supporting role on some of our other accounts. In keeping with our commitment to expanding 80:20’s pub quiz capabilities, Nick also brings rare insights into the silent films of Charlie Chaplin – you never know when that information might come in handy.

Who would have thought the UK would be in for two heavy snowfalls in a single year? With memories of January’s snow still relatively fresh, we are now struggling with another deluge of snow that has all but paralysed transport networks in much of the country. (more…)

One of the clients we have been excited to win recently is Maddox Consulting. Maddox is a strategic management consultancy specialising in aviation, transportation and environmental matters. The firm is a group of fearsomely bright management consultants, principally drawn from LEK, one of the top international strategy firms. As a result, the Maddox team has interesting insights and opinions on a wide range of current news items and trends, which is great ammunition for our thought leadership PR programme. Having kicked off with Maddox at the start of October, we were very pleased to score our first piece of coverage for the firm last week with Tnooz, the online travel technology media outlet. You can read Maddox’s views on what TripAdvisor’s credibility crisis means for travel agents here.

The good people of Portsmouth, Hampshire could have justifiably taken fright at the weekend, as novice pilot Marc took to the skies in an Ikarus C42 microlight. The aircraft is owned and operated by Solent Flight and Marc was accompanied by instructor pilot Chris. (Solent Flight is appropriately based in Lower Upham, which sounds rather like Chris’s instructions to Marc throughout the flight.) A 30-minute flight saw the Ikarus make an exciting and enjoyable round-trip to Portsmouth, turning back over the Spinnaker Tower, and Marc found the aircraft sturdy and simple to control. Top marks go to Chris as an excellent instructor. However, is it just us who think Ikarus is a slightly unfortunate name for an aircraft?