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Among the many tales of woe that circulated in the aftermath of the London riots, were the stories of courageous locals confronting looters and galvanising task forces to clean up the damage. The image of Battersea's residents defiantly wielding brooms as part of the clear up appeared in newspaper editorials around  the world, including the New York Times.

One casualty of the violence was the Battersea branch of Debenhams which sustained serious damage in the riots. As news came in of the clean-up efforts, Debenhams' PR team received reports of a fearless local  woman who had been spotted outside their store attempting to ward off rioters during the disturbances.

The seventy-something, since dubbed 'Brave Brenda', had been urging looters to go home and stop causing damage.

Debenhams' head of PR Ed Watson and his team made it their mission to locate the fearless pensioner. 'We put  put a search plea on Twitter and we found her within  hours (despite the fact she didn't have a personal  Twitter account),' says Watson.

So impressed was Debenhams with Brenda's brave defence of its department store that the intrepid pensioner was invited to officially reopen the store in  September.

The staff wore We heart Battersea t-shirts and gave a spirited Brenda 21-broom salute.

This Twitter publicity coup is all the more surprising  because Debenhams only started tweeting in house in May. As with many companies, there was a struggle  initially about the kind of identity the company should adopt on Twitter. 'At the start the business wanted us to put out sales messages on Twitter until we talked them around,' Watson adds.

Debenhams' new account already has nearly 8,500  followers, but has been rapidly accruing new ones since it began phasing out its old DebenhamsRetail account. The chain's eight PR people now control all of the chain's editorial output, which includes its 140 character tweets. 'After a couple of years I had this realisation that the Twitter account was a really useful

resource and should have the same voice as the in-house PR team,' Watson explains. 'It can be hard for external agencies to understand the nuances within an organisation, so we needed someone in house that gets really us.'

PR manager Ruth Leach was asked to control the Twitter accounts. She now tweets regularly, including on four or five  scheduled occasions over the weekend. 'I'm always thinking What will be the kind of tweet that will be retweeted? she explains.

Debenhams also has a presence on Facebook, which is growing at a rate of 1,000 likes every week. The company had toyed with the idea of creating different  Facebook accounts for its different departments but decided it would be counter intuitive. 'People don't come to Debenhams just for one department so it doesn't really make sense to communicate with them on a department by department basis,' Watson says.

He characterises the company's structure as a hub and spoke approach with social media and PR at the hub, surrounded by human resources, retail, Debenhams Direct, buyers, marketing and customer services. And he credits the company's social media efforts with helping to facilitate more two way communication

internally. 'If customers say These bras are too small on Twitter then we feed it back to the buyers. The same goes for when something is very popular on Twitter.'

Watson likes the democratic nature of the dialogue on Twitter and Facebook but notes the similarities between social media management and conventional PR. 'In social media, like in regular PR, it makes sense to use the lighter stories and campaigns later in the week.'

The team is now looking to follow the likes of easyJet and create a social media presence for its customer  service division. And it is also considering how to reward Facebook fans by providing extra access to in-store money-off events. 'It is making everyone's jobs a little bit more interesting,' Watson concludes.

The spirit of community

The Battersea store has also formed a basis for other good news stories. When a fancy dress shop  pperating across the road from Debenhams in  Lavender Hill was gutted by fire during the August riots, the retailer offered a 2,000 sq ft concession for 18 months which allowed the Party Superstore to restart trading.

Debenhams also offered 35 hours of support from various members of staff over a month long period to help businesses affected by the 8 August riots and designed an 'I heart Battersea' logo, which it put on all the store windows. 'It became a focal point for the community,' Watson explains.

Like many of the high streets in affected areas of London, Debenhams' Battersea branch was boarded up after the riots. And these boards provided a graffiti canvass for local residents on which, unprompted, they painted messages of defiance and support. These have since become known as the 'community love boards' within the department stores; more than 700 messages were written to show support to Battersea and its local retailers. Debenhams has taken photos of the graffiti which will be displayed in the restaurant at the Battersea store. The retailer has also contacted local art galleries to see if they would be interested in displaying the 15 metres of prints.

'We decided to preserve the boards of all the  supportive messages written by the local community because it's an important piece of social history,' Watson says.

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