octavius

YOUR SUSTAINABLE PARTNER IN STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

A dedicated team of passionate experts in public influence and communication, whose mission is to promote your activities in a constructive way.

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ABOUT

Octavius is an independent communication consultancy that helps you in your development, your campaigns and your events. Supported by a team of independent consultants, Octavius proposes solution-oriented services in: stakeholder engagement, media relations, digital communication and event production. 

Our added value is to provide you with short-term consulting services adapted to your ongoing activities and challenges.

FOUNDER

A Belgian and French national, Pierre-Loïc Nihoul has an academic background in business administration, marketing and international relations. He has a wide content-specific experience in project and account management and implementing pan-European public communication programmes.


Pierre-Loïc has coordinated more than 60 conferences and events for the European Commission since 2008. He is an active member of communication networks, philanthropic associations and think-tanks and gives lectures in universities and high schools.

VALUES

Octavius was built upon a clear vision: provide public and private organisations with human, sustainable and flexible consulting services. Close to you, we aim at responding to challenging issues related to your sustainable development strategy. Our strategic assistance will emphasize the impact of your communication and improve your reputation.

We play the role of a coach for your communication manager, with availability, empathy and positivism. Our aim is to highlight the best side of you.

We are committed to supporting the construction of a strong European Union, and to helping organisations in favour of a sustainable development of our economy in environmental, agricultural, societal and cultural terms.

Octavius is, by essence, passionate about water and the ocean, one of the main challenges of the 21st century alongside climate action.

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EXPERTISE

Founded in 2017, Octavius proposes a range of various communication consulting services.
Stakeholder engagement

Identify stakeholders and document their expectations, prioritise, visualize key stakeholders, mapping each stakeholder’s relative importance, power and influence, engage through understanding each stakeholder’s attitude towards the project and develop targeted communication, animate networks and organise collective intelligence activities, monitor communication effectiveness.

Digital communication

Accompany your organisation in your digital strategy, audit your online notoriety and image, set up social media strategies, target and tailor your online communication activities, coach your communication manager.

Media relations

Map the most relevant journalists and media with realism, experience and availability, create content, place content and grow visibility.

Public communication coaching

Analyse trends, design a communication strategy, set up an action plan, elaborate budgets, organise public presence and speaking, monitor impact.

Media research

Analyse smart data, deliver quantitative and qualitative analytics, audit media reputation and notoriety, assess campaign impact, anticipate trends.

Public affairs

Government relations, media communications, issue management, corporate and social responsibility, information dissemination and strategic communications advice.

Event production

Define the best event format with realism, experience and availability, assist you in the production of conferences, workshops, exhibitions and stands, give you access to a reliable network of suppliers and providers.

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FREELANCERS ECOSYSTEM

Octavius is a sole proprietorship without employees. Aware of our clients’ interest in setting up an ecosystem of advisors, we work hand in hand with a dozen freelance consultants sharing the same human and sustainable values. Depending on each project, their role is to share their expertise in political communication, public policy, copywriting, facilitating, media planning, digital strategies, media data research, web design, graphic design and event production.
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Carla, digital media specialist, Belgium

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Cristina, PR officer, Romania

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Thibaut, digital media specialist, Belgium

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Paulina, strategy expert, USA

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Eleanor, copywriter, Norway

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Fanny, PR expert, Belgium

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Felipe, PR officer, Spain

Maria, digital expert, Portugal

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Elske, copywriter, France

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Rossella, PR officer, Italy

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David, copywriter, Belgium

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CASE STUDIES

Our purpose is clear: give strategic assistance to public and private organisations in order to highlight the best side of them. We give you the opportunity to explore a few of our powerful collaborations.
From August 2019 to July 2020, we have accompanied and advised Day by Day, a French company in its journey to conquer the Belgian market. This company is the first bulk grocery network for daily grocery shopping, in on-demand quantities and without unnecessary packaging.
As part of our public relations expertise, our objective was to develop visibility for the brand in both general and specialised Belgian media.
The difficulty we have encountered was to promote a foreign brand while talking about responsible consumption. We set up a tailor-made team of PR officers that was able to find the right words and the right approach to increase media interest on the subject.
Thanks to a close collaboration valued by both sides, our partnership continues to thrive after the mission. The brand awareness is rising in Belgian media and Day by Day’s network keeps on growing.
During one year, from November 2019 and November 2020, our mission, as subcontractors of a Brussels based PR agency, was to accompany change within a federal public administration, SPF Finances. Our role as internal communication coach was to provide tools for team cohesion and virtual communication.
We have organised 5 collaborative online workshops with 50 participants each time. Each workshop being related to one of the aspects of the internal change the administration was experiencing. Change is something that can lead to anxiety and discomfort.
The workshops were a unique opportunity to strengthen the involvement of all, favoring exchanges and the commitment of the team. It was the way to apprehend change in a positive and creative way.
Since January 2020, we have been working on the public relations strategy of our international automobile construction’s client, Toyota. Clean transition is one of the current issues of the automobile industry. In this regard, our main challenge is to develop Toyota’s awareness and exposure in the media.
Along with the commercial and managing teams in Belgium, we have organised an agile and collaborative workshop. Well conducted, this type of workshop is a unique opportunity to strengthen the involvement of all, favoring exchanges and the commitment of employees. It was the way to adopt a proximity and human approach.
The result: in partnership with Toyota’s public affairs team, we managed to deliver insightful recommendations and a 3-year national action plan.
Since March 2020, we have been collaborating with Elium, an all-in-one knowledge sharing platform dedicated to empowered teams. Our mission is to give our client the visibility he deserves by creating pertinent content for its owned channels and ensuring media relations.
For this partnership, we have gathered a dedicated team of experts in copywriting and public relations, capable of writing in an original manner and of informing a wide audience on Elium’s issues. The biggest challenge of the partnership was the timing. Our time-frame was small but thanks to our solution-oriented services, strategic meetings and editorial considerations, it was a success.
Indeed, we managed to deliver 20 content items and a whitepaper, coherent with the editorial line of Elium. The goal of this in-depth document was to present how digital technologies can enable organisations to adapt to market changes, recover from the current crisis, and thrive in the “new normal” due to the pandemic.
The objective for the year 2021 is to go bigger and to broaden the scope by developing their European position. We will highlight the best side of Elium by placing contents in European media.
From April to July 2020, we have led a public relations campaign on political, regional and European issues. For AER, a European association based in Brussels, the work was focused on the creation and placement of contents from regional projects at the European level.
Thanks to our freelancers ecosystem, our team managed to cover all areas of this campaign: copywriting of unique content, ensuring smooth media relations, engaging with the right stakeholders and video editing.
Being committed to supporting the construction of a strong European Union, and to helping organisations in this regard, the key outcomes of this campaign can be summed up in three figures: 50 placements in 5 countries in 3 months.
From August to December 2020, we have conducted, as subcontractors of a Brussels based PR agency, a digital climate action campaign with EEAS for youth in 9 European countries and the United States of America. The aim of the digital campaign was to reach and engage the young audience to share stories of hope on climate change and on a better future.
The main challenge we have encountered was the creation of our team. 10 targeted countries meant 10 public relations officers to activate all around the world in order to collaborate together.
Beyond their PR roles, their profiles needed to correspond to real Swiss knives. From the mapping of the selected media, to the creation of content, the media relations, and the placement of the content, the job was proactive and complex.
The campaign ended with the great number of 120 placements in the 10 targeted countries. Podcasts have been recorded for the occasion and media partnerships were born following this action.

Since January 2021, we have been collaborating, as subcontractors of a Belgian public affairs consultancy, with an international pharmaceutical company to support them in a period of change and transition at a national level and to help them best manage their relations with their stakeholders.

Public positioning and branding construction are the main challenges of our reduced team of two people on this mission. Change can be something scary and difficult to understand. Thus, the issues at stake concern both internal and external communications.

Our approach is singular, we have conducted a collective workshop with directors and 1-to-1 interviews with the managing team in order to fully comprehend what does change mean to them and how the future of the company and the daily life of the collaborators will be affected. Once again, we have used a collaborative way of working, promoting real exchanges and transmission.

The outcome of this collaboration is the writing of multiple position papers, and the creation of an internal survey dedicated to the 200 staff members.

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CONTACT

OCTAVIUS

Avenue Louise 523
1050 Brussels, Belgium

  • team@octavius.be
  • +32(0)2-613.15.27
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Carla is our latest addition to the team with her arrival in Autumn 2020. Her primary ambition is to work on engaged projects with passionate people and to participate in their success. She has accumulated a large number of experiences which has allowed her to perfect her skills and knowledge of communication in general and digital communication in particular.

As a Swiss knife, Carla helps us on various aspects to develop Octavius: strategic communication, media relations, business administration, copywriting. Sustainability, health and social issues are topics where she feels the most comfortable. She is an agile entrepreneur who is able to quickly manage the unexpected. Her work methodology is collaborative and proactive. It promotes understanding, exchange and support.
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Cristina strongly believes in content marketing and storytelling as the basis of any communication strategy. People, brands, companies, institutions – they all have a story. She is excited to discover it and tell it to relevant communities using the right mix of channels, either traditional media, stakeholders’ and influencers’ voices, or social media and digital channels.

We have been working with her since January 2020. Her entrepreneurial mindset and intellectual flexibility helps her to adapt to every situation. Simple, effortless creativity is the principle she follows in her work. And last but not least, doing good, contributing to the collective good – socially and economically, through her ideas and efforts.
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Earned media expert for 27 years, digital media specialist and marketing believer, Thibaut has been part of our team since the very beginning, in July 2017. We believe that his wisdom and strong interpersonal skills are the foundation for success in each project he has been working on.

He has developed methodologies and key indicators to measure brands reputation through an integrated marketing approach. He coaches brands to optimize a positioning strategy in line with their vision and values. Thibaut has a wide knowledge of media relations, sustainable development goals (SDG) and information technologies.
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Paulina is a multilingual professional with 12 years of work experience in strategic planning, project management, communication affairs, editorial writing, and building liaisons in the environmental, agricultural, sustainability and climate change arena.

Paulina has been part of Octavius’ ecosystem since the summer of 2020. We value her solution-oriented mindset and outstanding interpersonal skills that contribute to positive work environments and help maintain an efficient workflow.
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Eleanor is a multilingual writer, content editor and public relations specialist who helps organisations in her areas of expertise – environmental & social sciences, sustainability, rehabilitation, mobility and animal welfare – to make an impact. She is also a photographer who loves to capture animals, buildings, nature & people.

Since 2018, we consider her like a real Swiss knife due to her various skills in European communication. Public relations, public affairs, European economics and politics suit her perfectly well. She is a valued creative and flexible team member.
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Since the Summer of 2020, Fanny has been a golden asset to define a strategy and impact any stakeholders (press and media, politics, citizens…). Her areas of expertise – sustainability, EU politics, agriculture and food, cooperation, HR and new management, social affairs – are linked to diverse experiences and open networking.

Her ability to quickly take a step back to have a more comprehensive view and to target the right objective makes her a powerful copywriter. Mom of twins, she is also passionate about education and nature.
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Felipe is a Spanish journalist who has been part of the team since 2020. He has extensive experience in the media and institutional communication. His areas of expertise are various: climate change, environment, Internet for social good and digital communication topics in general.

Felipe’s smile and positive mindset bring motivation to Octavius’ ecosystem. He is someone who can adapt very easily to any situation. His flexibility allows him to adjust to short-term change quickly and calmly, so that he can deal with unexpected tasks effectively.
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Maria’s focus is primarily on strategic planning across the different areas of marketing and communication, but always with one common thread: all things digital as vehicles for sustainable growth and environmental matters. She is a digital expert, tech enthusiast and keen developer.

Maria is an agile entrepreneur who communicates effectively, interacts and works with individuals and groups with ease. In our team since September 2020, her flexible mindset makes her eager to learn new skills and assume responsibilities outside of her original position.
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Elske is an Irish writer and copy editor working in her mother tongue – English. For almost a decade she has been generating articles, manuals and whitepapers for SMEs and EC organisations in Ireland and Brussels. She’s part of Octavius’ team since January 2020.

Her writing and editorial skills are a real added value to our ecosystem. She has been contributing to various projects from equality, sustainability, human resources, and energy efficiency.
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Rossella’s open mindset, argumentative flexibility and passion for writing have led her to contribute to many local projects in Italy. Her interest in multiculturalism helped her to tackle the socio-economic problems and the political-cultural aspects of the projects in which she participated.

She has been part of the Octavius’ ecosystem since the Spring of 2020 and has been willing to develop her skills and her network with us. She understands how important and powerful is the point of view of the new generations. Her areas of expertise include EU affairs, press relations, climate action and Internet for social good.
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David is a holistic senior copywriter, translator and digital marketing strategist. His mission is to never stop learning and to turn his experience into results. The dynamic online universe is his natural habitat.

Since the summer of 2020, we have been working with David on Dutch-speaking projects. His ability to adapt quickly to changes makes him the perfect match for working on several projects at once.
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