We're a winner in the 2009 Start Ups Awards!

 

PRESS RELEASE: November 2009

 

2009 Women in Business award winner: Talk to the Press

 

16 November 2009:

Natasha Courtenay-Smith, founder of press agency Talk to the Press has won the Women in Business award at this year’s Start Ups Awards.

 

The awards ceremony, organised by startups.co.uk took place on Friday 13 November at the Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, London. The prestigious awards celebrated the UK’s most outstanding new businesses and the people running them.

 

The ten award judges said about Natasha and Talk to the Press: "In a particularly hotly contested category, the judges in the end unanimously voted Natasha Courtenay-Smith the winner. Her innovative business builds on the growing media demand for fascinating stories about real people, and has proved immensely successful, facilitating stories in most mainstream newspapers and magazines as well as online and broadcast media."

 

 

	Natasha (centre) having just received her Women in Business award.

Business excellence was rewarded across a variety of categories, including Women in Business, Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Product of the Year and Green Business of the Year.

 

The winner of each category was chosen by a panel of top judges, including Doug Richard, founder of School for Startups, Holly Tucker, director of NotOnTheHighStreet.com, Charlie Mullins, MD of Pimlico Plumbers, and Clare Young, runner up of The Apprentice. The successful businesses and the talented people behind them proved their brilliance after fighting off competition from hundreds of entries.

 

“Our winners are the business leaders of tomorrow but the driver’s of today’s economy,” says David Lester, founder of startups.co.uk. It’s essential we recognise their efforts and the success that they have achieved especially in the tough economic conditions.”

 

Natasha Courtenay-Smith says: “I am thrilled to have won this award. There were almost 300 entries in the Women in Business category, and it’s wonderful to know that having been analysed by a number of business experts, Talk to the Press was deemed the best.”

 

Talk to the Press is a press agency aimed at helping individuals across the UK sell their story to newspapers and magazines. Over 5000 people type in variations of the keywords ‘Sell my story’ into Google every month in the UK.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRESS RELEASE - SEPTEMBER 2009

 

Press agency Talk to the Press named as finalist in the 2009 StartUps Awards

 

Press agency Talk to the Press has been identified as a business to watch after reading the finals of the 2009 prestigious nationwide Startups Awards in the ‘Women in Business’ category.

 

“Talk to the Press’ place among the finalists of this year’s Startups Awards is testament to the company’s originality, flair and strong prospects for growth. With such strong competition, to have reached this stage is, in itself, a superb achievement,” says Sara Rizk, deputy editor of Startups.co.uk.

 

Talk to the Press is a press agency that specialises in helping individuals with real life stories they wish to sell to the national press. Since founding in 2007, the company has represented many people at the centre of a media storm, including Richard Cass, the father of Jamie Neale who was lost in the Australian outback, Juliet Hill, whose daughter became the youngest teenager in Britain to have a gastric band, and Kara Hoyte, whose brave testimony resigned the double jeopardy laws in the UK to history. The agency has devised an appropriate media strategy for each and also ensured they received appropriate fees for their stories.

 

Talk to the Press’ has also handled and written dozens of other stories for publications include the Daily Mail, the News of the World, The Sun, The Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and almost all the women’s magazines in the UK. The company also supplies stories to magazines based in Australia, Greece and Belgium, and regularly contributes to television shows such as This Morning and GMTV.

 

Natasha Courtenay-Smith, director of Talk to the Press, says: ‘Every day, my team and I feel incredibly proud to be helping ordinary people who wish to talk to the press, or sell a story to newspapers an magazines, and it’s fantastic that all our hard work and dedication has been recognised by Startups.co.uk.’

 

‘The agency and its website www.talktothepress.co.uk has changed the route the route that individuals who wish to talk to the press would go, ensuring they get the best possible deal, with a publication they are happy with and their story is told in the way they would like it to be told.’

 

This year’s judging panel consists of some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs. Other finalists in the ‘Women in Business’ category include NuBeginnings, the UK’s first boutique boot camp, and Biscuiteers, which sells hand iced biscuits in themed collections.