The Romans History, MMXVIII

Ayyyyyyy LinkedIn!

It’s been three years since our first annual Romans History post and, flatteringly, they seem to have become a thing.

You should try it. There’s something deeply satisfying about looking back over the course of 12 months and writing down the things that made you the happiest, or the proudest or the most drunk.

IMHO, this was The Romans best year to date. In the almost 48 months since we launched we’ve gone from zero team, zero clients, zero revenue, to being named Agency of The Year 2018. ?????

It’s sometimes been a slog. It’s sometimes been frustrating. But it’s never not been loads and loads of fun. Here’s what we’ve been up to:

JANUARY:

• The brilliant Roman duo of Ottilie and Jack do a talk on how to win a Lion in Cannes, cos it’s something they know a bit about.

• We win the global Nokia account.
• We launch #YayDelay for Gordon’s Gin, letting people pay for their gin with their train delay, uniquely using pissed off commuters as an influencer channel to reach the wider UK.

FEBRUARY:

•  We win a massive pitch for Mondelez.
• The D&AD Awards kindly ask me to do some judging.
• We resist the urge to do a Valentine’s Day survey story. However, Jasmine did ‘officiate’ at a wedding with 280 character vows on behalf of Twitter…

MARCH:

• The Romans absolutely sweep the PR Moment Awards with five wins.

• They include me and Mish in the PR Powerbook.
• The Dubai Lynx Festival kindly invite me over to judge. (Saw some really amazing work from the Middle East, played a little bit of golf).
• We brew our first beer, Rome Brew. No one goes blind.

APRIL:

• To launch PS4 game God of War – a game all about father and son relationships – we embed the exceptional photographer Tom Oldham in Lewisham hospital for a week to capture the exact moment men become dads for the first time. It’s really beautiful.

•  I did a little lecture on creativity at the University of Westminster.

• The Romans get coverage on High Snob. Like, coverage about us. We all consider immediately retiring.

MAY:

• To launch game Detroit we work with Dr. David Hanson to write an academic paper predicting when robots will have civil rights.

JUNE:

• We launch Season 2 of our multi-multi-mega-award-winning podcast When Life Gives You Melons for Freya, hosted by Maya Jama. It peaks at number 5 in the UK charts and is now Europe’s most successful brand owned podcast.

JULY:

• During the world cup we launch the ‘Golden Tweet’ awards (geddit?) They're won by Kyle Walker and get bare #cov.

• The Romans very own Vi Hazlerigg gets named as one of PR’s 30 Under 30 (and gets herself on the front page of PR Week).

• Vi and Ottilie give a talk at Angles about how to make a successful podcast.

• PR Week interview me about creativity in PR. Are YOU a creative in PR? Your boy's recruiting. Send me your book and let's chat.

AUGUST:

• Remember that guy from that meme who said ‘I’m a sneaky snake’? Well, the Romans Rosie Cope tracked him down to recreate it to launch Nokia’s AR version of the cult classic Snake game.

SEPTEMBER:

• We win a pitch for Virgin Trains.
• Our Liv Butcher gets her essay shortlisted for the PRCA’s Reginald Watts Prize.
• Jasmine Basi has an idea to launch a unique internship programme for Twitter #OneTweetCV where a single tweet could get you hired.

OCTOBER:

• We bag 4 wins and 2x highly commendeds at the PR Week Awards.

• We win our first public affairs brief, Transferwise. We successfully campaign to protect European consumers from hidden bank transfer fees and get to work with political cartoonist Lectrr.

• We hook back up with our mates at BrewDog, and are retained by the brilliant Hawkes Cider.
• We open our Method Slow Fashion Store and get #cov #cov #cov.

• Ben Smith gets me on the PR Moment Podcast. (I’ve yet to bring myself to listen to it ??????).

NOVEMBER:

• We score a cheeky double at the PRCA Awards.

• We get hired by Moonpig.
• You elect me to the PRCA Council (thanks for voting ??) and I'm asked to join the PR Week Creative Mentoring Project (shout out my mentee Rachel).

DECEMBER:

The Romans str8 win at Christmas ????????????:

1.    We shoot an ad for Twitter, featuring the man @JohnLewis. It gets named as one of the ads of the year. It gets millions of views and an awful lot of media pick up. Shout out Tom Winterton and Jasmine Basi in particular.

2.    To help Virgin Trains and Rethink Mental Illness tackle suicide at Christmas, we paint the script of It’s A Wonderful Life, along 7.5km of the yellow line of train platforms from Glasgow to Euston. It gets millions of views and an awful lot of media pick up. Shout out Lucy McGettigan and Joe Burdon in particular.

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We’ve seriously, seriously packed it in this year. Thanks for all the love.

Have a top Christmas.

Send us your briefs and CVs in the New Year ??????

XXX