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Damo Jones marks 25 years of storytelling and PR in Liverpool

2 hours ago

Damo Jones marks 25 years of storytelling and PR in Liverpool

Damo Jones is celebrating 25 years of PR in 2025. It’s a quarter of a century since he sent out the first press release for Chibuku Shake Shake, the club night he and his friends co-founded as students.

He currently works with Bongo’s Bingo, The Art School, LEAF, Ma Boyle’s, Picante and Newsham Scream Park, along with other projects in the North West and beyond with new clients including The Florrie and Numatic.

Having proudly spent most of his adult life in the city, Damo’s PR has evolved in tandem with Liverpool. Championing the city and the wider region is at the core of Damo’s work, including during the pandemic when he secured months of coverage in national media to help keep the spotlight on the region’s hospitality sector.

Damo explains:

“I started sending out info for Chibuku Shake Shake in the year 2000, with no idea how to approach PR other that it felt like a mad story to tell as an antidote to the superclub culture. That’s how I started – pitching to Mixmag, Muzik Mag, Radio 1 and others, all intrigued by this crazy sounding party ran by hare-brained students in Liverpool.”

Damo Jones - The Guardian Guide - Sat 11th May 2013 - Croatia feature

“Life was very analogue back then – a Nokia burner with limited minutes and Snake was as advanced as it got. There was no social media, no influencers – you needed word of mouth but getting mentioned in print or on air was always a triumph. Some PR work was done by email but I was also posting artwork down to London’s media HQs and trying to create a buzz. We once had promo CDs made with videos, artwork and after-party chaos sent to journalists.”

Damo adds:

“We used acetate flyers which overlapped to show you the DJs and dates and we postered across the city only to be told off by the police. I even remember making a collage poster of all the press clippings when Gilles Peterson came to DJ and printing it off in the library. Media loved the story, too – how the name Chibuku Shake Shake came from a curiously-tasting drink in Malawi – and the support grew.” Damo then started to write club reviews for the very magazines he’d pitched news and features to.

“In the early 2000s Liverpool was an amazing city as a student, but less so once you graduated as employment options were limited – many friends left for London or Manchester. Yet Chibuku kept me anchored to Liverpool way past graduation – a miracle in some ways that we graduated at all – alongside an assortment of dreary, life-sucking 9-to-5 jobs. There wasn’t yet then the same scene for food and drink, culture and arts, that we are blessed to have now in Liverpool; but equally, it was the hedonistic and liberal part of Liverpool’s DNA which I believed would further evolve.” In those embryonic years, Damo chipped away with more journalism, eventually asking the clubs he’d written reviews for if they needed PR which led to TandemPR launching in 2005, with Circus, Garlands, Sankeys, Goodgreef, Wax:On, Kinky Malinki and more as eventual clients.

Damo Jones - Article Cut Outs

He says:

“Liverpool is integral to me. Before I moved here from Shrewsbury, we used to come to Cream. But I fully fell in love with the city the first day I arrived for university and have been here ever since, apart from brief stints living in Manchester and France and DJing in Ibiza’s Bar M for a season. It’s funny to think I didn’t study PR or ever think of it as a career, though I’m a writer at heart – I studied English and Creative Writing, so PR was essentially a happy accident. I was incredibly lucky to meet inspirational people during my studies who became great friends in parallel to the electronic music scene developing. Liverpool was then – and still is now – such an energising and collaborative place and this laid the foundations which inexorably bound me here. And I realised there was an opportunity to give PR a proper go as my work grew later into that decade.”

Liverpool winning Capital of Culture in 2008 was a huge moment for the city and for Damo it set the city on a bold new trajectory as the local and UK club scenes continued to thrive. In parallel to this, Damo’s remit had expanded into festivals – locally, nationally and in Croatia for The Garden Festival, Electric Elephant, Outlook, Dimensions and Love International, to Sound City in Liverpool, Nozstock in Herefordshire and Lake of Stars in Malawi. Then from late 2015 he started working with Bongo’s Bingo across all locations, which rapidly expanded across the UK and internationally to great acclaim. He remained mainly in the events world until the pandemic hit in 2000 and everything changed.

Damo continues:

“I’m very lucky to work with some amazing clients and projects, from The Wall Street Journal featuring Bongo’s Bingo in 2022 and being on the front cover, to Chibuku Shake Shake being Mixmag’s Club of The Year in 2003; or from the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibiting at 24 Kitchen Street in 2021 and gaining wonderful and poignant media coverage, to Jonny Bongo and Joshua Burke chatting to Jonathan Ross about all things bingo in 2017 on Radio 2; from landing coverage for Natalie Haywood and Yousef when they spoke to Prince William during the pandemic, to working with Visit Liverpool on championing the city’s hospitality industry; from the Coopers centenary earlier this year which everyone absolutely loved, through to telling the story of The Art School’s tenth anniversary with Paul Askew. There are so many more magical moments which make me smile; like convincing Numatic – who I now work with – to create a custom pink Henry Hoover as a Bongo’s Bingo prize, or Andy Johnson from VideOdyssey and his madcap trip to Dundee to save 1000s of VHS cassettes from landfill in 2021 which media embraced, or the crazy story when builders found a menu in LEAF on Bold Street which was from 1913 when it was called The Yamen Café. Or the sheer pleasure of being involved in Eurovision in 2023 with Invisible Wind Factory – quite possibly Liverpool at its majestic peak. Other clients include Melodic Distraction and The Pandemic Institute to Ditto Coffee and Laces Out via Dockleaf and Freeze to name a few. For me, it’s intrinsic to find the heart of people’s stories and to bring their businesses, charities or themselves to life, and where possible to celebrate Liverpool too.”

“It’s impossible to have a single, standout favourite, but I think the period of work I’m most proud of was during the pandemic and trying to keep the media’s focus on Liverpool. I offered to work for free to stay sane and wanted to tell people’s stories of how they or their businesses were affected as the world turned inside out and initially got some local stories out there. I remember when all my normal work had either paused or stopped completely and it was a profoundly difficult time, but by chance I helped Channel 4 find some guests to speak during a live news broadcast from Content in Cains Brewery when everything was still socially distanced. And seeing that happen first-hand got my determination back so from there, for almost a year, I spoke to countless people and told their stories to media and secured hundreds of interviews, features and news slots in broadcast, print and online media – and the phone kept ringing for even more case studies, interviews and filming locations. It was a deeply challenging time for everyone and that’s how I got through it work-wise, trying to keep the spotlight on Liverpool especially as it was the hospitality, tourism and events industries ravaged by Covid-19. As life gradually returned to normal my focus shifted away from clubs and festivals and I started to work with some of the people I’d helped during the pandemic, like Paul Askew from The Art School, Natalie Haywood from LEAF and Iain Hoskins from Ma Boyle’s.”

Damo Jones - Article Cut Outs

Damo’s been reflecting on working in PR and how it’s Liverpool which not only got him started but where he still lives today. “My PR has proudly evolved as Liverpool has – the city has had so many transformations, I think especially from winning the Capital of Culture in 2008 to Eurovision in 2023. It’s during those 15 years where the city’s splendid ambitions have grown in myriad ways, especially as a hospitality and tourism destination. Liverpool’s such a great city for so many reasons – to live in, to have a family, to work. It’s become a place people still come to study and now they stay on, too. It’s also got vibrant and supportive media and social media industries, because without them there would be no-one to amplify any stories at all – so my heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who kindly support the projects I work on.”

“Over time, PR has changed drastically in some ways – for instance, how social media is such a big part of campaigns in the last decade – but the relational core of clients and media, and the story-telling side, are still the same as they were over twenty years ago, connecting people and stories together. Good stories endure when well told and I still love getting coverage in print, on TV or on radio. Miranda Sawyer did an amazing feature on Bongo’s Bingo for the 10th anniversary back in March in The Guardian, and that initial connection came from our love of clubs, including going to Bugged Out! In the early 2000s.”

Damo works alone and new projects generally comes through of mouth. “I’ve never been a schmoozer and I’m not a self-promoting PR-person. But I absolutely love all aspects of the job, from research and drafting a press release to the pitching. You can’t take yourself too seriously in PR as it’s such a fun role, despite some challenges being freelance. I keep my clients to a small group but I’m always open to new projects – I love getting a good story out there. I can’t think of a better place than Liverpool for my work to have started, from 2000 all the way to how the city is today. I’m excited for the future.”

Find all the latest Liverpool news here.


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