On January 1 the agency’s managing partner became president-elect of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). President Elect is one of four elected officers of the Institute, who also sit on the CIPR’s Board of Directors. Rob will take over as president in January 2016, succeeding Sarah Pinch. The CIPR president acts as chairman of the institute and as a representative for the profession in the UK. Rob said “2014 president Stephen Waddington has set a great precedent for this year’s incumbent Sarah Pinch and for me to follow in 2016. It’s an honour to be given the opportunity to lead the Institute and continue the great work that has been done by the CIPR.”

Whilst fans up and down the country were watching their footballing heroes go toe-to-toe for the first three points of 2015 from the stands or at home, we were delighted to be rubbing shoulders with them along with 10 year old Raza Mohammed.

The lucky Rolls Crescent Primary School pupil kicked off his New Year in true Blue style and joined the team after winning a design competition to find a mascot for the New Year’s Day home tie against Sunderland.

The creative contest, organised by Official Manchester City FC Partner, Nissan, saw schoolchildren across Manchester invited to design their dream Nissan Juke, personalised by taking Manchester City FC as their inspiration. Up for grabs was the ultimate City fan’s prize – the chance to lead the team out of the tunnel and centre stage on to the famous Etihad pitch.

Taking inspiration from the Club’s beginnings and Mancunian heritage, Raza’s design featured the Citizen’s iconic blue and features a symbol taken from the arms of Manchester – a golden eagle.

Raza was treated to a specially-created Nissan Manchester City FC Home Mascot Experience, starting with a surprise chauffeured car journey to the stadium in the ‘MCFC Juke’, a car wrapped in his winning design. His prize also included match tickets, a full team strip, a tour of the Etihad Stadium, access to the home team changing room and the chance to take a shot against City’s goalkeeper in front of a roaring home crowd.

“I was really nervous before we walked out, but I’ve had an amazing day and enjoyed watching the match. Getting picked up and driven to the stadium in my car was really cool too. I’ll never forget today,” said Raza.

As a Club with roots firmly in the local community, Rolls Crescent is just one of the schools that Manchester City FC’s award-winning City in the Community (CITC) regularly works with to help empower lives through football.

All activity was delivered by Rule 5.

The agency working with British Cycling delivered an astonishing 137 million impacts on Twitter last weekend for the UCI Track Cycling World Cup, a key contest in the run up to Rio 2016. Teams from 39 nations were at the Lee Valley VeloPark in the velodrome that was used at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The social media campaign incorporated video content, edited and shared in near real-time ahead of TV highlights which will be shown on BBC 1 next Saturday. Gold Medal wins from the men’s and women’s team pursuit teams plus Laura Trott in the omnium, Owain Doull and Mark Christian for Great Britain in the madison provided some of the electrifying content.  The social campaign also used interviews with fashion guru and cycling fan Sir Paul Smith and fellow knight and six times Olympic track cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy.

“We had a team of five working shifts throughout the weekend posting content on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well as a live blog from 7am through to midnight”, said Rule 5’s Rob Brown. “We were working hand in hand with British Cycling’s team to ensure that if you were following the event on your phone, laptop, tablet or PC you got a real sense of the excitement.”

Social coverage was monitored using Facebook Insights, YouTube Analytics and TweetBinder, which allowed the Twitter statistics to be tracked in real time. Over thirteen thousand tweets used the hashtag #TWC or #TrackWorldCup or the phrase ‘Track World Cup’, reaching 24.4 million people at an average of 5.5 times across the weekend and generating 137m impacts.