Top PR Stunts and Campaigns of 2019 So Far
2019 has kicked off with a bang. We’ve seen a flurry of creative activity with the PR industry focusing its efforts and budgets on the ‘wow factor’ and shock value, often opting for stunts as a route to the forefront of the public’s minds. The nature of the comms industry in general forces agencies and PR practitioners to constantly innovate and think outside the box and this has resulted in brands stepping into uncharted territory. We take a look at some of the key PR stunts so far this year:
Carlsberg: We Probably Weren’t the Best After All
Carlsberg took a brave and honest stance when they decided to launch an entire marketing campaign around the obvious mediocrity of their beer, launching the below ad.
The acknowledgement comes as part of their recent rebranding to ‘Carlsberg Danish Pilsner’ and a brand new recipe that promises to completely change the hops, barley, brew and taste.
There is no risk without reward and it’s safe to say Carlsberg have reaped the rewards here. The change in branding, colour scheme and taste has served to shift public perception from a weak and bland beer to a modern one that should be the go-to choice for the UK beer drinker. Cheers!
Huawei - Northern Lights in London
Huawei took to the skies above Tower of London to mesmerise on-lookers with a laser art installation that mimicked the Northern Lights (or the Aurora Borealis), commissioning immersive artist Dan Archer to create a bespoke installation.
The inspiration for the project came off the back of research conducted by the innovative tech company, revealing that witnessing the real-life natural phenomenon tops UK millennials' bucket list. This is a perfect example of how the combination of a visually striking campaign with hard stats to back up a creative idea can be a potent PR mix that appeals to a wide variety of publications.
Ford UK - Backbone of Britain Campaign
Ford decided to go against the grain and stand by ‘white-van drivers’ and the vehicles they drive, despite the sea of negative press they receive, championing them as the ‘backbone of Britain’ in a minute-long celebration video of them.
In a statement, Ford UK wrote: “Here at Ford, we know it’s not our vans alone that keep Britain running, it’s the people that drive them – you.’’ It’s a very clever and effective idea that highlights the work behind the scenes that these individuals do to keep our nation ticking over, but also a brilliant ad ploy to market the various car models they offer. Again, brilliant work in giving these often-maligned van drivers a moment in the spotlight.
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Heathrow Express - #FlowerExpress
……. And we unleashed a flurry of flower power for Heathrow Express to celebrate the Chelsea Flower Show 2019, creating the #FlowerExpress featuring over 3,000 flowers.
This was part of a wider campaign urging passengers to snap a picture of the colourful carriage, using the #FlowerExpress for a chance to win 2 tickets to the show. But the visual campaign garnered hard-hitting results too, landing widespread media coverage across print and digital publications including Sun, Metro, MSN, Mirror and Independent.
Stunts often take up more budget, more time and more effort to create than other types of campaigns, but when they come off, the impact can be seismic, with the best campaigns combining a unique blend of insights, timing, trend and visual pull.
How well do you know your bones?
Content Marketing Assets For Vitabiotics
Millions of Brits are unable to tell their femur from their fibula.
We created a highly-engaging quiz for Vitabiotics to test Brits' knowledge of the skeletal system, and whether or not they can identify where various bones can be found in the body, landing coverage in Mirror, Independent, Northern Life and The London Economic.
A spokesman for bone supplement Osteocare, which commissioned the research said: “From a young age, you start to notice signs your body isn’t quite as healthy as it once was.''
How well do you know your bones? Take our test to find out:
To find out more on our content marketing services, visit: https://www.72point.com/pr-services/content-marketing/
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In an age where SEO is king, this project ruled
By Head of Digital Jack Peat
Last year we made a bold declaration. Following a period of sustained growth in the digital environment we announced that we had created the perfect PR package for SEO that delivered on multiple touchpoints to provide one of the most advanced search products on the market. And now we have the proof in the pudding.
PR AND SEO
Although the intersection between PR and SEO has been widely documented, few have been able to keep pace with the demands that new algorithms place on content creators looking to use media to elevate brands into high-ranking positions.
Follow links have become scarce, social signals are hard to obtain and garnering traction across high-authority and relevant media is no mean feat. But it can be done.
BREAKTHROUGH PACKAGE
72Point’s Breakthrough package has been designed to satisfy the full range of criteria outlined by search engines from a marketing perspective. We understand the importance of high DA follow links and so include them as a guarantee with every project we run. We understand that high engagement, traffic flow and quality of content is key too, so we strive to deliver on those fronts as well.
But don’t take our word for it.
SEO PROJECT FOR LYST
Last month we ran an SEO project for fashion search engine, Lyst to help recruit experts for its Sneaker Intelligence Unit – a community of sneakerheads to provide unique insights into the sneaker market. The MI5-esque interactive test housed on its site aimed to boost their search visibility in the sneakers market and was distributed to the national media.
The campaign garnered 126 pieces of coverage in both national and internationally relevant publications. The Daily Mail, Fox News and the Evening Standard were among the biggest scalps, but coverage in the Fashion Network, Fashion United and WWD ensured we also delivered on relevancy too.
Of the 126 titles that covered the story, 82 of them linked to the Lyst platform, with 4 follow links coming from sites with a DA of over 90. The campaign drove tens of thousands of people to the page and created a significant social buzz, getting shared almost two thousand times and ramping up the page’s social signals.
In all, it delivered across all key objectives and demonstrated how, done well, PR can provide the perfect tool for marketing your site to boost search visibility.
For further information, take a look at the coverage here, and take the test for yourself here.
For assistance and information on the news generation services we provide, contact us here.
#ASKANAPPRENTICE
Former Marketing Apprentice - now full-time employee - Geo Craig writes on his experience of being an apprentice at 72Point:
If you had asked me what my feelings were at the start of my apprenticeship I would have responded with three simple words; fear of jargon. When starting out as an apprentice on the marketing team of a Top 20 consumer PR agency you find yourself asking everyday “what does this all mean?” and “how many times can I get away with asking someone to repeat something before I seem crazy?” It’s safe to say that after coming from a career as an academy footballer at a professional team I would have to suffer being the village idiot for a while. But sometimes being fresh on the scene can be your biggest strength.
After taking the necessary time to settle in and get to know my colleagues I started to find that people were surprised by my fresh outlook on the PR and marketing industry. I found I was able to bring a new element of creativity and even spontaneity to the table, rather than reverting to type and doing things that I believe to be true because someone taught me so. When you have a fresh pair of eyes you’re able to attack a variety of challenges in an infinite amount of ways and you just throw out all kinds of ideas ranging from bonkers to brilliant.
Using an analogy that makes sense to me, I liken it to how modern football managers are increasingly selecting young players so that they can tactically mould them into the role they need them to carry out, rather than picking seasoned professionals who have experience but may be set in their ways.
Of course it helps to have mentors around you. I believe that a young professional is only as good as the experienced individuals who they can constantly learn from and who support them. At 72Point, there’s been no shortage of mentors. At times, being a fly on the wall and observing the day-to-day operations of various people in various teams (design, creative/idea generation, social media, account managers, video etc.) has been the most effective form of professional development. It’s been a rare opportunity to get to grips with so many different areas of an industry and the possibilities are truly vast for an individual who grabs opportunities with both hands.
I’ve now been at 72Point for a year and a half, and every now and then I have to take a step back and acknowledge just how much I’ve learnt in such a short space of time. Managing and coordinating events, handling our social media accounts, maintaining our website and the day-to-day uploading of content to it are just some of the many responsibilities I’ve been able to get to grips with and now at the age of 20 I find myself in a full-time role, having been offered the job by 72Point at the end of my apprenticeship with a year’s professional experience under my belt. Also, the networking opportunities have been incredible. Being able to attend events and meet marketing professionals, make friends and set up knowledge sharing sessions has been invaluable and possibly the best part of my apprenticeship.
The biggest testament to the start my year as an apprentice has given me is that I’ve gained an appetite for new challenges and new responsibility. I’ve discovered a confidence in myself and the ability of young people to allow themselves to be molded, and quickly immerse themselves into anything. Two years ago I was playing against some of the top U18 footballing outfits up and down the country and couldn’t tell you the first thing about a marketing strategy, now I find myself with a significant amount of marketing experience and on a pathway to more knowledge.
72Point's social channels will be taken over tomorrow by two of our apprentices,, use #AskAnApprentice to get your questions across and get insight into a working day here at 72Point!
For more info on our career opportunities, visit: https://www.72point.com/careers/
WHY EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT NEWS GENERATION
Every brand has a story they want people to hear, and with publications increasingly eager to start national conversations a new synergy has emerged that is making news generation one of the most talked about marketing and PR strategies on the market.
News generation has conversation starters at its very core. It has long been a PR tool called upon to infiltrate the media landscape, providing comms teams with access to an armory of publications that satisfies their requirement to reach both broad and specific audiences. But with an increasingly hectic media landscape and more marketing techniques unearthing themselves every day it can be easy to forget the simple effectiveness of crafting campaigns tailored to your story in order to achieve vast media coverage.
Creative Brand Awareness
News generation is a creative way to keep your brand name in the forefront of consumer’s minds, and should be an integral part of any marketing mix. If done properly and effectively, it can provide the bare-bones to a strategy for fast-fame and fortune for brands who are craving national and regional exposure. News generation projects are not bound to any particular platform, meaning that you are able to traverse a number of key channels with one core creative idea. Research has shown adding news generation to your campaign boosts ROI by three times on average and makes other media in your campaign work harder.
At The Marketing Show North, 72Point hosted the first ever News Generation Keynote Theatre, celebrating the technique by inviting key industry-specialists from across the country to attend the talks and share why they deem it to be of importance to today’s PR market.
VIDEO
The Sun’s Deputy Northern News Editor Richard Moriarty (right) joined us in the session, discussing how he believes that journalists are on a ‘’three line whip’’ to include videos with news stories, and that it still breaks his heart that people would rather stare into their phones than pick up a copy of the Metro during their commute. The simple fact is that videos make news stories more engaging to the consumer’s eye, increasing dwell-time on particular pages, thus making the pay-off for publishers vast.
SEO Benefits
Among other topics of discussion, the SEO benefits of news generation strategies was mentioned, with publishers having more reason to embed a follow link if it links to a page featuring further content and information based on the news story. The trick to securing follow-links is to get your client to build a bespoke page on their website featuring results of, for example, a survey that forms the basis of the news story, giving readers and publishers an incentive to click through.
It also helps get you cut-through with the press. News generation is the art of approaching the media intelligently, and arming yourself with the relevant ammunition to secure widespread coverage, which is the key to keeping your clients happy (find out how we secured over 21,100 hits in 2018 alone here).
In today’s day and age, it’s impossible to forecast what marketing technique is going to step into the forefront of comms professionals’ minds, but one thing is for certain, news generation will remain central to the majority of marketing plans for 2019, providing the flesh and bones of the impact PR campaigns can have, with the key development being more visual assets getting produced to enhance the engagement of news stories.
For assistance and information on the news generation services we provide, contact us here.
Greggs and Gillette Reap the Rewards of the Morgan Multiplier
By Jack Peat
Greggs and Gillette will be basking in the spoils of successful January marketing campaigns this month after early results show an uplift in sales and brand awareness.
Gillette achieved the highest uplift in Ad Awareness of any brand in the UK thanks to their brave yet divisive campaign "The Best a Man Can Be", which challenged toxic masculinity in modern society.
YouGov BrandIndex data shows that Gillette’s Ad Awareness score (whether someone has seen an ad for the brand in the past two weeks) improved by a massive 12 per cent - up from 13 per cent to 25 per cent following the adverts launch on the 13th January.
Naturally, not all of that was positive, but it did result in a Word of Mouth Exposure score of +11.4 compared to +0.9 prior, which will doubtless come as music to the ears of execs who are battling to stay relevant in an increasingly saturated market.
As for Greggs' coveted new vegan sausage roll, which made Piers Morgan almost throw-up on Good Morning Britain so incensed was he by the herbivorous erosion of our meaty pastry treat, the bakery has seen a sales boost of 14 per cent in the first seven weeks of 2019.
Like-for-like sales in stores have increased by nearly ten per cent up until 16th February, growth which was attributed to the launch of the vegan-friendly sausage roll in the company's financial statement.
It goes to show that pissing Piers Morgan off could indeed be a bonafide marketing strategy in 2019, and as I noted here, the formula is devilishly simple: Take one virtuous message and target one of the most well-followed, straight-talking personalities on social media and you will get a backlash that will write headlines for weeks to come in return, keeping your brand in the public's eye for the foreseeable future.
There is something perversely satisfying about labelling Piers Morgan a "marketing tool". He undoubtedly qualifies as one, but he is also wistfully unaware of it. What he sees as a bid to rid Britain of PC-ravaged clowns is actually creating a Morgan Multiplier of brand equity and increased sales.
As Oscar Wilde once said “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”. I would agree, but in this day and age would add, “you could do a lot worse than rub Piers Morgan up the wrong way”.
Tackling Mental Health With Channel Mum
Channel Mum is unique a social enterprise in the parenting sector combining professional advice from top UK experts, alongside crowdsourced knowledge from influencers and ordinary parents. There is a strong emphasis on help for mental health issues with free support available around the clock from trained psychologists, counsellors and health visitors. Channel Mum has a social reach of over five and a half million mums with more than half a million unique users each month. Founded just three years ago, it is now the UKs fastest-growing parenting site. The objective of this project with 72Point was to raise awareness of Channel Mum’s counselling support service and to drive engagement with the Channel Mum website.
‘You are not Alone’ is an online forum where members can submit questions, reach out to other mums or provide help and useful connections. As a social enterprise with a limited PR budget, Channel Mum relies on low-cost but effective public relations campaigns to raise awareness of their vital work, to drive traffic to their website and support the growth of their membership. To achieve these objectives, Channel Mum opted to utilise 72Point’s News Generation services. 72Point has pioneered the adaptation of the News Gen model for digital media, supporting clients to grasp the varied opportunities of the online market. News Gen has become a daily staple for newspapers (both print and digital), and a cost-effective way to secure much-needed coverage at the “front of the book” and to generate engagement across all major social media platforms.
The website targets Millennial and Gen Z parents and hosts ‘textbook v truth’ video series supported by a forum where mums and dads can discuss parenting issues and receive community support. Channel Mum hosts a series of forums where key information and discussions are shared relating to a wide range of key issues, but with a particular focus on mental health. In response to mounting concern across the UK in the last couple of years relating to growing mental health issues amongst key demographics of society, Channel Mum has launched a series of online toolkits, including ‘Mum’s Mental Health Course’, ‘The Channel Mum Anxiety Course’ as well as a number of campaigns to support discussion around mental health. Channel Mum is working to raise the profile of this service amongst its key audiences. The site receives a large volume of User Generated Content from mothers – and received this harrowing video in 2018 of a young mother who had filmed one of her panic attacks.
In the minute-long video, Sophie Mei Lan from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, can be seen struggling to breathe and hysterically breaking down while attempting to hide her anguish from her family. The mother-of-two sobs: 'I just don't want to be here – I just can't cope.' Sophie filmed her panic attack to show other parents what the frightening disorder looks like. 'I wanted to show what mental illness can be like – warts and all,' she said. 'Some people may find it strange I picked up my phone, but it shows real life at its most ugly and raw.’
Channel Mum supported Sophie’s decision to publish this content and applauded her for her bravery in raising awareness of the reality of parenting with mental health issues such as anxiety and panic attacks. Channel Mum partnered with Sophie, a digital journalist, blogger and vlogger, harnessing the power of her personal parenting audience to maximise potential reach of her video. Channel Mum then approached 72Point to ensure that this content was expertly – and sensitively - packaged up for the mainstream media and distributed to top tier media publications who could raise awareness of Channel Mum’s free online counselling services to an international audience as well as to decrease stigma around mums struggling with mental health issues.
The campaign achieved both extensive online and broadcast coverage and was a ‘watershed moment’ allowing mums around the UK and abroad to open up and share their experiences without fear of judgement. The coverage saw a 670% spike in users visiting the site and the forum, with hundreds stating they had seen the coverage and come directly. Following the coverage, Channel Mum’s user numbers are rising over ten per cent each and every month. The site now has more users on YouTube and Instagram than legacy parenting sites such as Netmums and Mumsnet which have existed for 18 years. The project was an astounding success, securing 50 pieces of coverage in top tier news publications in the UK, United States, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore. Top UK news coverage appearing in The Daily Mail and MailOnline, The Mirror, The Independent, Metro, Daily Record, as well as top global news sites including MSN and Yahoo! as well as parenting news sites including Little Things.com, Zena.com and The Bump.com. The project secured on online readership over over 1.79 billion and encouraged over 3,000 social shares, with positive engagement from Channel Mum’s key target audience of millennial and Gen Z parents and families with young children, especially mothers and professional. The project caused Channel Mum’s media exposure to peak in Q4 (see report attached). As well as national media, the article appearing on “The Bump.com”, with 1.4M reach, drove positive sentiment in this quarter, increasing Channel Mum’s net tonality by 93 points.
Most significantly, Sophie’s bravery and the sensitive handling of the story by Channel Mum and 72Point, resulted in the story being picked up by ITV’s Good Morning, where Sophie was invited to talk on the programme about her struggles with panic attacks and anxiety. Sophie appeared alongside Emma Kenny, one of Channel Mum’s top psychologists and mental health experts. Together they were able to draw on key elements of the news generation project, and reach out directly to parents about Sophie’s experience. The broadcast coverage yielded great feedback from mothers, relieved to see someone with similar issues to their own being given a positive platform in the British media. Positive comments flooded in via social media as a result of the story, including one reader named ‘The Life of Laith Abu Naim’ who tweeted:
‘I just found your channel through the daily mail newspaper. Thank you so much for sharing you are amazing. I will for sure be following you on here and Instagram keep up the incredible work’ :heart:
The project achieved further media coverage when Good Morning presenter Eamon Holmes, inspired by Sophie’s bravery, chose to share his own personal experiences with panic attacks live on air, revealing personal details, alongside his wife, of his struggles with anxiety stemming from feelings of guilt around the sudden death of his father, Leonard. Video clips of Holmes’ personal story generated further coverage in the Daily Mail and the Metro as well as on further lifestyle, consumer and business websites. With 72Point’s support, the overall result of the project was a viral story with 620 pieces of worldwide coverage – a cost of just £8 per piece. Further positive impact from this project include the growth of Channel Mum’s membership, which has increased by 10% since the project was released.
Siobhan Freegard, founder of Channel Mum.com said: "We didn't see this a PR story, we saw it as a way to get parents the help that so many need but are afraid to acknowledge or ask for. Throughout the whole process. 72Point were exemplary, handling the material with care, sensitivity and understanding - and the coverage vastly exceeded our expectations. Two months on we are still seeing daily traffic driven by the campaign."
Managing Director of 72Point, Chris Pharo, said: "It's a great feeling to have been able to create such an important moment in the media, emboldening mothers to share their personal experiences without fear of stigma or negative reaction. I am very proud of our team for handling this project with professionalism and compassion - they deserve to win this award.
For more info on the case study. visit this page: https://www.72point.com/pr-case-studies/raising-awareness-of-maternal-mental-health/
How 72Point Dominated Veganuary Coverage
Fans of plant-based diets will be pleased to know that 72Point dominated veganuary with coverage for clients such as Sainsburies, Vitabiotics, Linda McCartney and Social Enterprise UK.
PROMOTING DEBATE AROUND STEM PROJECTS AT SCHOOL
72Point is delighted to announce that our Bitz and Bob project has been shortlisted for the Best Use of Digital Marketing Category at the CIM’s Marketing Excellence Awards, which recognises and rewards brilliance in the field of marketing by celebrating the finest minds within the profession.
‘Boat Rocker Rights’ were seeking a ‘wow’ moment to help promote the launch of their pioneering new pre-school show on CBeebies, Bitz and Bob. The series is the first of its kind to promote STEM subjects, especially engineering, to a pre-school audience using a strong female lead.
Our project delivered mass coverage whilst carrying these important key messages, serving as a widespread conversation starter.
To help this campaign travel far and wide, our Broadcast Team created an engaging video to capture organic reactions of children who learn that careers in STEM are for both boys AND girls.
This strategy was conceived after it was found 64% of engineering employers say a shortage of engineers is a threat to their business and women make up just 8% of engineers in the UK, the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe.
We brought in five people from different walks of life (a female engineer, a male ballet dancer, a female bus driver, a female computer technician and a male nanny) and asked the children to guess which person fits into which profession, highlighting how young children begin to form stereotypes on which genders specifically fit certain job roles.
We also reached out to our extensive network of news sites including The Sun, The Mirror, Metro, Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Independent and regional syndications such as Johnston Press to ensure that coverage of this video was widespread.
Our Digital Outreach team delivered the content to a range of online publications, and our social media division ensured that the content was seeded out to our client’s target audience of parents, especially women. To achieve this we focused primarily on Facebook, which is used by 74% of parents – of which 81% are women, with a view of engaging them to watch the show and be actively involved in supporting children especially girls in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Some of the key results of the campaign were as follows:
- 148 pieces of regional coverage
- Coverage views of over 1.43 million
- Video viewed more than 500,825 times on Facebook alone
- 428,299 views on the CBeebies Facebook
This project was one of our Breakthrough packages, which features social media outreach, distribution services and targets the appropriate audience on each network. For more info on our breakthrough packages click here:
The awards ceremony will be taking place on 11 April 2019 – where we will find out whether our STEM campaign will be rewarded with The Best Use of Digital Marketing award. Stay tuned for further updates.
Facebook Reveal Plan To Merge Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger
By Social Media Manager Ben Gelblum
Facebook execs today unveiled plans to integrate the messaging element of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in a move set to bolster the group’s dominance of social media.
This will mean that Facebook users for example, will be able to message a WhatsApp user making the ecosystem the social media giant is creating even more seamless.
Merging communication between the apps is set to occur by the end of this year or early 2020 and will pit the reach of the combined messaging services against rivals from Snapchat to Apple’s iMessage to SMS to various Google messaging apps.
Facebook acquired the photo-sharing platform Instagram for approximately $1 billion (£761 million) in 2012, followed by the messaging service WhatsApp in 2014 for an estimated $19.3 billion (£14.7bn).
Instagram Stories
Instagram first and now Facebook have integrated Stories systems of disseminating posts, using one of the defining characteristics of Snapchat.
All this cements the Facebook group’s dominance of global social media users and social media marketing spend.
This new move will further extend the monetisation of Instagram and WhatsApp, which bring in a fraction of the advertising and marketing revenue of Facebook, despite Instagram’s 1 billion monthly active users and WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion.
With 91% of social media users using mobile devices to access their accounts, the move cements the Facebook group’s dominance of social media ad spend.
Over 88% of brands are now marketing on social media, the vast majority still on Facebook – one of the fastest growing ad networks. In fact, the number of advertisers using Facebook has more than doubled in the last 18 months.
96% of Social media marketers consider Facebook the most effective social media advertising platform based on proven ROI.
Instagram, the world’s second biggest social media now has over 25 million business profiles. Female internet users are more likely to use Instagram than men and 78% of teens between the ages of 15 and 17 use Instagram, as well as 63% of 13 to 14-year-olds.
Click here to find out more about how 72Point can help you navigate the increasingly vital world of social media, with strategy, social media campaigns, assets and top content to drive traffic and build conversations around your brand.
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