Octopus Communications has been re-appointed by Notting Hill Housing, one of London's largest property developers and providers of affordable housing, to increase awareness of its shared-ownership, rental and private homes for sale.

At a time when the housing sector is undergoing unprecedented change, Octopus will help Notting Hill continue to champion the role of affordable housing providers.  Octopus previously worked with Notting Hill from 2006 to 2008.

Kicking off campaigns again this week, Octopus will help shape Notting Hill's profile in new and traditional media as the organisation continues its pan-London expansion and gears up to announce some exciting new developments.

Jon Lonsdale, managing director, said:  "When we worked with Notting Hill previously, the London property market was a very different place.  Due to the recession, pay freezes and job cuts, Notting Hill now counts many different groups as customers.  We're looking forward to spreading the word about some of their amazing new projects and re-establishing them as a key commentator on the increasingly important housing sector and London property scene."  

We're calling on all progressive PR and Comms managers to put forward a campaign which will assessed by a five-strong panel chaired by PR Week's editor, Danny Rogers. The resulting trends and campaigns will be recognised within a four page PR Week feature in September and at a special client briefing on 8 October.

To find out more about the project, head over to the Future 5 section of our site.

I was looking forward to seeing this year's more than usual given the change in our industry and the state of the economy.

While it may lack some of the sophistication of the FTSE, I think the top 150 is a decent enough indicator of what the industry vibe is and no surprise that 'flat' is the new 'growth'. Some interesting omissions (I'll leave that for you) and a few reality checks but something that caught my eye was the growth of the Group - that's a conversation for another time.

So Octopus Group grew by 4%, up to our highest position (60). That's a real testament to everyone's focus on doing a good job for our clients! It's also nice to retain the private status given that so many consultancies above us aren't.

Sandy Purewal

A tough act to follow that may be, but April is shaping up nicely too.

Octopus has received two awards-related pieces of news in the last few days.

We have been shortlisted as a finalist in the Outstanding PR Consultancy category of the 2010 CIPR Excellence Awards.

As if that wasn't enough, our Cisco Customer Kings campaign has been nominated for a European Sabre Award. Customer Kings is now in its second year and has been a hugely successful campaign, helping Octopus to win PR Week's Marketing Communications: Business award in 2009.

Awards and nominations are a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase some of the great work we have done for our clients, and the capabilities of our people. Not surprisingly, we are delighted and looking forward to more successes in the coming year.

At this point I wanted to use some nice Octopus-based word plays, but who knew that Octopuses don't have a collective noun?   

So without further ado...

First up we have Kirstin Beveridge, our new Senior Account Executive. She spent her PR infancy working in the consumer pond, spending 2 years in-house for Red Letter Days before tackling a spot of freelance work for a number of reputable London agencies. Having worked across a broad range of clients and sectors Kirstin is now ready to take the plunge into the world of tech PR.

Also among the new brood is Account Executive, Zuzana Bielikova. Having completed a degree in PR, Zuzana went on to amass a tidy body of experience, completing a coveted internship at a top consumer agency before taking up a challenging in-house role for a restaurant group.

Another new Octopede is Carly Baughen, Management Accountant extraordinaire. She joins us from Tenon where she spent four years in the audit department working toward the completion of the AAT-ACA qualification. Carly decided to make the move from working in practice to an industry role and has swum over to Octopus.

And the final new member of the tentacled crew is Jodie Lake (am I running out of cephalopod words? Nope!), who joins Five21 as an Account Executive. Hailing from a sales background - working first as an estate agent, then as a recruitment consultant - Jodie has decided to change direction and delve into the wonderful world of PR.  She is already deeply immersed in learning HTML, running a blog and ultimately working to get to grips with the social media maze.

And if the collective noun fact got you interested; read all about why Octopi is not the correct pluralisation of Octopus.... (clue: Octopus is not Latin, but Greek).

This is a very exciting win for us - the Meltwater brand will be familiar to most PR consultancies for its news monitoring tools, but at its heart is a fascinating conversation about the changing media landscape; as the internet has grown in importance as a content delivery tool, the publishing industry is having to reinvent the way in which it raises revenue from content.

As interesting as this topic is, Meltwater also provides tools for file sharing and collaboration, as well as social media monitoring services through its recent acquisition of BuzzGain - all delivered via a cloud computing style Software-as-a-Service approach.

We won this account following a competitive pitch process, and will be the lead agency coordinating activities across Meltwater's key European territories, including the company's home territory - Norway.

But it got me thinking about websites and how they reflect your company life stages. Take a look at the first Octopus website from 2002. Done by a mate for £500, all in flash, no real content - we had no people and less clients - but we loved it. Full of fun and optimism that most broom cupboard start-ups have. This was the Toddler site.

Our first site... back in 2002

Our next site was launched when we moved into our posh new office in 2006. Felt like we'd started to get noticed. We were working with some great brands, nominated for PR Week awards, growing like stink, we were over-excited, full of stuff to say and we couldn't hire people quick enough. This was the Teenager site.

Hopefully, our new site shows bravery, hunger, is true to our roots, occasionally astute and beautifully together (check me living the values there). Let's call it our new Grown-Up site. Experienced, award- winning, well qualified, insightful but still delivering everything with a smile.

Hope you enjoy the site, the blog and all the things we plan to use it for in the future. Oh and cheers to, Rubbaglove, for the inspiration.

Jon

FISITA (the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Ingénieurs des Techniques de l'Automobile, to give it the correct name) is the umbrella organisation for national automotive societies in 38 countries around the world representing more than 165,000 automotive engineers around the globe. FISITA focuses on helping to create efficient, affordable, safe and sustainable automotive transportation by providing a global forum for dialogue between engineers, industry, government, academia, environmental and standards organisations.

Founded in 2007, Greenbang offers up-to-the-second news for global business leaders tasked with working towards a low-carbon future. Greenbang gives its readers insight into cutting edge sustainability strategies, technological breakthroughs and comment from leading green and clean tech thinkers.

Find out more about why FISITA and Greenbang chose to work with Octopus here.

So it's with big smiles all round that we're delighted to be saying a big "HELLO" to not one, but two new members of the Octopus team this month.

First up, Agi Augustyniak joins our specialist influencer relations team where she'll be working with on analyst programmes for a number of our clients. Agi will add great credentials to the team following experience with Microsoft EMEA, Qulacomm, Samsung and Intel.

We're also delighted to welcome Julian Moore on board as our Business Development Consultant. Julian joins us from RSW in London, and brings with him a wealth of BizDev experience from across the B2B, B2C and branding fields (not to mention a frankly unhealthy dislike of John Cusack).

But that's not all - just like the ever expanding pot of porridge from that kids story, we just keep getting bigger. We're currently looking for a few good people to join us at Account Executive, Account Manager and Account Director level as well, so if that sounds like you, why not drop us a line here