Marco de Comunicación wins the European Excellence Award in the category relaunch

Marco de Comunicación repeats as European Excellence Award winner with its campaign Nature's Way to Beautiful for The Body Shop

Barcelona, Madrid, December 15th, 2008

Marco de Comunicación, the most awarded Spanish Independent PR agency for fourth consecutive year, wins a European Excellence Award for its PR campaign for The Body Shop, “Nature’s way to beautiful”.

The European Excellence Awards distinguishes the best PR campaigns in Europe. The 2008 edition received over 1,100 entrees. Among those, Marco de Comunicación succeeded in winning the category Relaunch with The Body Shop and in addition placing another two finalists, in the categories Travel and Tourism and Industry Associations with its promotion campaign for Tourism of Madeira which succeeded in enhancing the island’s popularity with Spanish tourists with a further 68.1% increase in incoming travel from Spain in addition to previous year’s 37% increase.

The PR campaign for The Body Shop, the authentic ethically committed cosmetic brand, was designed with the specific objective to reaffirm The Body Shop brand values and to launch two new natural ingredients and fair traded new product lines. The PR campaign which lasted from May to October 2008 comes after years of relative silence in terms of media relations and after its acquisition by L’Oreal. The campaign involved creating news through a series of activities. For starters the agency organized a press trip in May 2008 to Paris for editors and directors of top beauty and women magazines to present the new wellbeing range and the new mineral make up line. This was followed by personalized desk visits to key beauty editors to present The Body Shop brand values and identity as well as the product range to journalists who were unable to attend the press trip. During summer, Marco de Comunicación carried out a survey about wellbeing with Spanish consumers, linked directly to The Body Shop wellbeing range. After summer, two press events took place on the same day in Madrid. During the first press conference the survey findings and the wellbeing range were presented. The second press conference presented the new Christmas line.

Over the 5 month’s duration of the PR campaign a total audience of over 115 million contacts were reached with 142 published articles in print media for a Real Advertising Value of 2.306.835 Euros and a ROI of 14.418%.

Didier Lagae, founder and Managing Director comments: “Together with the European Sabre Awards, the European Excellence Awards are the most relevant sector recognition. We are very proud to repeat as winners this year and in addition, two nominations have made the finals twice with our PR campaign for Tourism of Madeira, with which we previously won a European Sabre Award earlier this year.”

André Sand, The Body Shop Communications Director for Europe, Middle East and Asia added: “It is very rewarding to receive this recognition from the jury of the European Excellence Awards, composed by the best professionals in Europe. Marco de Comunicación’s campaign has been fundamental to reaffirm our brand values and the compromise of The Body Shop with the community while highlighting the attraction of our natural products.”

******

About Marco de Comunicación

Marco de Comunicación is the most awarded Spanish PR agency for the fourth consecutive year. Marco de Comunicación is one of only two Spanish PR agencies awarded with a European Sabre Award in 2008 for its campaign for Tourism of Madeira. Marco de Comunicación is also the first and only Spanish agency to win a Global Mercury Excellence Award, with two golden and two bronze awards in 2008. Marco de Comunicación is the only Spanish PR agency to win a European Excellence Award in 2007 with its campaign for Intervet Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals. In 2008, Marco de Comunicación repeats its success at the European Excellence Awards being one of the only two Spanish independent PR agencies to collect an award for its campaign “Nature’s way to beautiful” for The Body Shop.

With a team of over 40 consultants, Marco de Comunicación has wholly owned offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Girona and Miami and affiliate offices in over 40 markets through its ECCO agency network.

Marco de Comunicación is a full service agency specialized in creating news and creating brands and is led by Didier Lagae, former Deputy General Manager at Edelman Spain, Division Director at Weber Shandwick Spain, Corporate Communications Manager EMEA at Levi’s and Global  Communications Head at The Body Shop.