PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

Each week the Sunny Bird PR team research PR campaigns that have made their way into the media and choose one to share that demonstrates effectiveness, reach, simplicity, message and in some cases the opposite – how not to execute a PR campaign. Every month the team chooses their personal favourites and here we deliver them - The Good, The Bad and The Viral from the PR Campaign world.

This month we present a fashion designer using a dating app to showcase his latest collection, a florist attacking the big apple with guerrilla bouquets and some uncomfortable seating options on Mexico City’s pubic transport.

Fashion Show Livestreamed on… Grindr

In the ever competitive and ferocious world of fashion, designers are always on the hunt for the next big thing, not just when it comes to their designs but also how they showcase them.

British fashion label, J.W. Anderson, is known as the darling of London Collections Men and has a reputation for the unexpected but no one saw this partnership coming: J.W. Anderson announced that he would be livestreaming his latest collection for the very first time and exclusively on the infamous male only dating app, Grindr.

Although this move is a first from the fashion world and most definitely daring, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Grindr has an impressive seven million users across 192 countries who were all directed from the app to a digital destination where the video of the latest collection was shown live. Compare this to the last showing of J.W. Anderson’s that aired on YouTube and only achieved five thousand views over six months.

According to Grindr, the show was watched by hundreds of thousands of men with about a third of them viewing the live event and the rest watching the loop which was available for 24 hours afterward. As well as reaching a much larger audience for his fashion show, J.W. Anderson also achieved coverage in a multitude of titles as the news of his partnership hit the media. The New York Times was the publication primed to ‘break’ the news with others following suit including Vogue, The Guardian, Event Magazine, the Drum and many more to boot.

There is another element to this PR campaign that helped make it a success, both J.W. Anderson and Grindr are represented by the same PR agency highlighting an often overlooked reason to employ a PR agency rather than taking it in house – agencies will have connections with other brands that can work well together with you and yours.

‘Flowers For The People’ - Thistle Brighten Your Day!

If only we lived in New York and could experience this fabulous display on our commute to work! It’s certainly an Instagram-able image for any creative in New York to take a snap or cheeky selfie… and that’s exactly what the mastermind behind this idea wants you to do.

If you live in New York, chances are you’ve come across these large bold, colourful flower arrangements in random locations around the city. These eye catching installations are so striking and ‘banksey-esque’ that they’ve got curious New Yorkers thinking on who’s behind the guerrilla bouquets.

The mystery is now solved, Lewis Miller is the florist responsible for the city's recent rash of "Flower Flashes," a series of decorative floral arrangements that have popped up in places ranging from city landmarks, such as Central Park, to more surprising spots, like a public bin. Miller’s goal? To simply bring joy to citizens daily commutes: “Gifting flowers to New Yorkers is a simple idea that I have been thinking about for years,” Lewis says, “I am in the business of fantasy and flowers, and it’s my job to transform key moments in my clients’ lives into joyful, everlasting memories. I wanted to recreate a similar feeling for the everyday city-dwellers and tourists of New York City.”

The initial idea began when Miller and his team placed over 2,000 flowers at the John Lennon Memorial in Central Park. They were delighted with the response when strangers stopped to appreciate the arrangement. "That was my goal, my vision. Create an emotional response through flowers. And in this age of social media, we saw the fruits of our labour and were instantly rewarded via Instagram and other social media platforms. We got to see how our idea translated in real time with hundreds of selfies and photographs documenting the flowers throughout the course of the day. It was one of the most rewarding and gratifying 'events' I have produced," Miller said.

Not only is this campaign eye-catching but there is no sign of it stopping. Miller has said that he wants to expand his creations and hopes to share them with all corners of the Earth. The floral campaign has already been covered by Vogue and Architectural Digest this week and images of his creations have been shared on Instagram with the hashtag #LMDxNYC

To find out more about Lewis’s idea behind ‘Flowers For The People’ check out his blog post about their first ever ‘Flower Flash’ here!

PR Stunt Highlights Sexual Assault On Public Transport

A new style of train seat has suddenly appeared on Mexico City’s metro system and it was instantly labelled as inappropriate, uncomfortable and embarrassing. The seat was designed purely to raise this reaction and to highlight how often women are subjected to sexual assault and harassment whilst using the transport system.

The Metro seat was moulded into the shape of a man’s chest and penis. Underneath the seat there was a label that read: "It is uncomfortable to sit here, but that is nothing compared to the sexual violence that women suffer on their daily journeys."

The seat is not a permanent fixture, but part of a campaign launched by UN Women and the Mexico City authority and a video showing the reactions from the general public has received over 900,000 views and has been shared worldwide. Many people have praised the idea, while others called it "sexist" and unfair to men as it paints all men as potential perpetrators. Regardless, this simple PR stunt has certainly raised awareness for a widespread problem and has sparked interest across the world with an attention-grabbing video and a controversial subject.

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

Each week the Sunny Bird PR team research PR campaigns that have made their way into the media and choose one to share that demonstrates effectiveness, reach, simplicity, message and in some cases the opposite – how not to execute a PR campaign. Every month the team chooses their personal favourites and here we deliver them - The Good, The Bad and The Viral from the PR Campaign world. This month we present a social media campaign which we have followed from its inception in January to its completion in March. We’ve also looked at the unlikely pairing of the NHS and dating app, Tinder, to promote organ donation and filling the bad category this month is a tasteless campaign from The London Dungeon for Valentine’s Day.

All Aboard for the Best Intern-ship!

This campaign offered the perfect antidote to the January blues as it whisked us away to the promise of golden, Caribbean beaches, sparkling waters, food and drink and even the promise of money.

Royal Caribbean, the luxurious cruise company, pipped the rest to the post by claiming 2017's first 'best job of the year' stunt. Although these stunts are now quite commonplace with more ‘best jobs’ around than ever before, this one does stand out from the crowd as it was promoted on instagram and was hiring for instagram.

Royal Caribbean announced that it was looking to recruit an intern via Instagram to ‘work’ on three of its cruise ships over the course of three weeks. The lucky recruit would get free food, drink and flights and also a healthy £3,000 in cash. Their role whilst on board the cruise ships travelling across the oceans was to be ‘a hybrid between a photographer, documentary maker and storyteller’ - that can be translated to 'taking envy-inducing pictures and sharing them on Royal Caribbean's Instagram account'.

Royal Caribbean's Managing Director for the UK and Ireland, Ben Bouldin, commented: ‘Our cruise holidays are filled with extraordinary moments and we want to find a talented storyteller who can help us capture the unique experiences that make holidays so special.’

What piqued our interest in this campaign was that Royal Caribbean had only chosen instagram as a platform – typically the age of the average cruiser is over 50 whilst recent statistics show that 90% of instagram users are under 35. The Instagram ‘job’ came after research revealed the photogenic platform had redefined the way people book holidays. The research behind the decision comes from a poll commissioned by Royal Caribbean to find out whether or not social media was overtaking traditional channels of inspiration such as holiday brochures and comparison sites. We’re very sure that Royal Caribbean knows what it’s doing here but we would like to understand the inner workings; is the brand attempting to draw in a younger crowd? Are under 35’s influencers on the over 50s? Our money goes on wealthy families looking to take that last family holiday before their kids fly the nest, they want something fancy that everyone will enjoy and Royal Caribbean seems like a good option – they are on Insta after all – they must be cool!

The coverage has been excellent so even if the Instagram route is flawed at least they’ve achieved a broad wave of PR off the back of this campaign. So far, we’ve spotted the piece in Condé Nast Traveller, Mirror, Metro, Express, Daily Star, CNBC and other media titles around the world.

And the Winner is…

The Sunny Bird PR team really liked this campaign from Royal Caribbean that was spotted back in January, so much so in fact that we have been keeping track on the campaign ever since.

Ciara Flynn, fought off stiff competition from over 75,000 applicants to win the travelling photographer’s dream job and become the official Instagrammer for Royal Caribbean. Ciara's winning photograph of two young Buddhist monks won her three weeks across three oceans with all expenses paid and even a cash prize of £3,000.

The competition was only open to UK and Irish candidates but that didn’t stop almost 350,000 people worldwide posting to the hashtag, hoping that their image might be considered.

The campaign was the brainchild of Ben Bouldin, Royal Caribbean's Managing Director UK and Ireland, and came in response to data showing that more and more people were using social media channels as inspiration when booking their holidays.

'We're confident that throughout the "Intern-ship", Ciara will be able to skilfully shoot similarly amazing moments on board our fleet, capturing the imaginations of the younger generation and inspiring them to consider cruising as their next big adventure.' 

And there we have it, Royal Caribbean are on the hunt for a younger cruiser and quite rightly picked Instagram as the ideal platform to sway this new demographic.

Royal Caribbean has produced a very effective campaign here that generated a huge increase on its social media as well as a tidal wave of coverage including The Mail Online, Metro, TTG media, Travel Weekly, India Times, Dublin People, the Express and many more.

The NHS Teamed up with Dating App Tinder to Find People the Perfect ‘match’

In recent years the NHS has struggled to create a strong and memorable message that encourages young people to sign up to the donation register and in July 2015 the rate of people giving blood and signing the organ donor register fell for the first time in a decade. In 2015, the NHS wanted to get their organ donation message out to a younger audience, so they teamed up with popular dating app Tinder to get their message in front of their core demographic.

The app is usually used to find people a romantic match, however for one fortnight, the app also encouraged users to become organ donors. When people swiped to ‘match’ a prospective love interest, a message appeared on the screen encouraging them to sign the organ donation register with a direct link to the website.

Tinder also created bespoke profiles for some of its more high profile members, including Olympic medallist Jade Jones and Made In Chelsea’s Jamie Laing. These profiles carried the donor symbol and when somebody ‘matched’ with them the user received a message saying ‘if only it was that easy for those in need of life-saving organs to find a match’.

The aim of the campaign was to educate and encourage people to sign up to the register and by targeting this popular dating app, they are directly reaching the younger demographic that they are focused on. It was a clever way to interact with a specific demographic and the campaign was executed in a memorable and effective way that took social media by storm.

London Dungeon Apologises for Dark Valentine’s Tweets

Valentine’s Day is traditionally known to be all lovey-dovey. You would think that taking your partner or family out to a popular tourist attraction around Valentine’s Day you would be greeted by a special ‘all things love’ event. This was not the case for all popular tourist destinations as London Dungeon took Valentine’s Day in a much darker direction this year.

The family tourist attraction had to apologise after a social media backlash over its Facebook and Twitter posts. The tourist attraction was posting dark humour-themed Valentine's jokes on social media, but many were seen by followers as tasteless and sexist if not downright aggressive and offensive.

One social media post read: “What’s the difference between your job and a dead prostitute? Your job still sucks!”

Another said: “Jack the Ripper just messaged. He wants to Netflix and kill.”

Some posts made comments about the appearance of women: “I love a girl that’s a good eater. Female translation: you’re fat.”

A spokesperson for London Dungeon said: “We apologise that our social posts caused offence. Our ‘Dark Valentine’ campaign was a range of posts aimed to highlight the darker side of history and create debate and conversation. As a brand we strive to entertain our guests so they can enjoy the London Dungeon experience – both in our attraction and on social media. However, on this occasion we recognise that some of the topics many felt were inappropriate and therefore we apologise for any offence caused.”

Even Ann Summers who was working with the tourist attraction for one of its Valentine’s Day events thought it was in bad taste. “It is really disappointing to see tweets which are overtly sexist and negative towards women – attitudes we absolutely do not tolerate – or support – at Ann Summers,” the playful lingerie chain told Metro.

At Sunny Bird PR we believe this stunt was done on purpose to create heated discussions in print and on social and to this end it was very effective as it went wild on social and was also picked up by The Guardian, Metro, The Telegraph, Huffington Post and ITV News.

PR Campaigns – The Good, The Bad and The Viral

The Sunny Bird PR team has found the best of the good, the bad and the viral PR Campaigns. This week brings a diverse mix of campaigns including making it easier to give money to the homeless, a designer who is inspiring women after the US election, a 4D tunnel that stimulates all five senses and two unique alcohol brands who want to be THE spirit people drink.

A Contactless Payment Jacket

That Helps You Give Money To The Homeless

 Amsterdam-based company N=5, has created the 'Helping Heart' jacket which features a contactless payment touch pad to help people give donations to the homeless using their contactless bank cards. By hovering your card over the pad on the jacket you are able to donate one euro to charity for the homeless.

The idea behind this concept is to make it easier for people to donate, as many people do not carry cash or change on them nowadays, preferring to use their card to make payments. Secondly, most people would love to help the homeless but many people worry that by giving money directly to them that you will inadvertently support their addictions.

The ‘Helping Heart’ jacket aims to alleviate this concern as once the donation has been made, the wearer of the coat can only redeem the money at an official homeless shelter in order to ensure that the money is never received as cash but in other benefits such as accommodation for the night, a shower or food. The money from the jacket can also be exchanged for vocational training courses and to create savings.

The jacket is currently in the prototype stage and being tested by several homeless people in Amsterdam. This PR campaign has made waves in Amsterdam and has also been featured on Mashable, Elle.co.uk and The Debrief. The gift of giving never sounded so easy, rewarding and helpful.

The ‘Dear Women Project’ Encourages Us

To Write To Women Who Inspire Us

The US election had everyone on the edge of their seats, but some weren’t that happy with the outcome. When Hillary Clinton lost the US election, women all around the world were shocked, including Chicago-based designer, Emily Asher. Emily found comfort after the shocking election results by remembering all the strong women in her life and the influential women who had become her role models.

Open letters thanking Hillary for her role in the election were being printed at the time and Emily had a thought - why shouldn’t we all write to the women who’ve inspired us?

“I started thinking about all the great women who had come before Hilary and all those in my own life whose words and faces had given me comfort and strength. I felt the power of their accomplishments and their words lifting me up. It was a feeling I wanted to bottle up and send to all the women in my life.”

This resulted in the Dear Women Project being born. The idea is to write a letter of thanks or encouragement to ten strong women in your life - family, friends, celebrities, politicians - and ask them to do the same, creating a chain of thanks and support.

Emily created a series of notecards featuring portraits of strong women from the past and present, which can be used to send letters to inspirational women, with 25% of profits going to non-profit organisations supporting women’s rights and causes. A six-month subscription to the Dear Women Project supplies two cards per month and costs $55.00 (£45). The two cards will feature different influential, famous women. Delivery is currently limited to the US but Emily is looking into delivering worldwide in the near future.

Emily hopes this campaign will encourage people to write to the women in their lives and that the handwritten notes the inspirational women receive will be kept and treasured. For more information, visit https://www.dearwomenproject.com/

This inspiring campaign has been covered by online press in the US and has also been covered by Metro, Huffington Post and Stylist in the UK.

A Kraken Valentine

It’s not always the campaigns with the biggest budgets which turn my head (in fact this is rarely the case), what I do appreciate is a campaign that’s original, knows its audience, taps into what’s going on and most importantly – makes me smile. My favourite rum brand (OK, OK, I might be biased) has achieved all of this with its latest campaign for Valentine’s Day.

Spiced rum brand, Kraken, is helping pirates and landlubbers alike to find love this year with the help of the hashtag #Rumantics and of course, the legendary Kraken Octopus featured on the front of every bottle who we now find out is called….Ken.

Also known as the ‘cupid of cephalopods', Ken is The Kraken's alternative to Paddy McGuinness or Cilla Black. Rummy singles are invited to tweet a selfie to @KrakenRumUK using the hashtag #Rumantics. A shortlist will be chosen for Ken to whittle down using his dating powers to two lucky daters who will be chosen to go on a special Kraken date together. The whole selection process will be filmed for fans to watch and will be broadcast on The Kraken's Facebook page on 10th February.

For those not chosen for the special Kraken date, some lucky folk will win Kraken Dating Kits which include everything needed to create the ‘Any Port In A Storm’ cocktail, original glassware, black roses and black candles, Kraken hoodies and a Kraken Valentine’s card. As well as gifts, guests can also attend Kraken haunts in London and Brighton over the Valentine's weekend, and enjoy a night dedicated to the festival of romance featuring a mystic character who will read love fortunes. Party-goers will also be able to win drinks and cocktail prizes.

This campaign is not designed to achieve print coverage (although it has made the trade titles); it has purely been created to drive traffic to its social media platforms. We’ll keep a beady eye on those audience figures over the next few weeks to see how this campaign blossoms.

Virgin Holiday – Tunnel to Barbados

Virgin Holidays wanted to create a disruptive, engaging experiential PR stunt to raise awareness of its direct holidays from Manchester to Barbados.

To do this Manchester based Smoking Gun PR decided to bring Barbados to Manchester for the day – with a little extra glamour brought by actress Michelle Keegan.

They did this by creating the world’s first 4D tunnel – complete with sounds and smells of the Caribbean that bought Manchester alive for one sunny day in June.

There were four main objectives for this campaign, these included:

·         Generating awareness of Virgin Holiday’s package holidays and direct flights from       Manchester to Barbados.

·         Creating an event that would build exposure across all media channels

·         Enable Virgin Holidays retail staff to capture sales leads on the ground

·         Capture the essence of the Virgin Brand – something brave with a touch of glamour!

To meet these objectives the agency commissioned a leading international 3D artist to create an illusionary tunnel which appeared overnight seemingly going to Barbados.  This painting was located in Spinning Fields, Manchester to take advantage of the great footfall in the area and on-target demographic.

Michelle Keegan was recruited to appear ‘inside’ the illusion – adding to media interest and underlining the ‘Manchester’ key message – this was to be her first corporate appearance since leaving Coronation Street adding to media interest.

The public were invited to interact with the illusion; picture sharing was facilitated on site using screens and backed up via a social media gallery, enabling further reach of the stunt, viral spread and also to enable data capture for sales leads.

Virgin Holiday retail offers were supported via the event, with branded sun glasses and water bottles being given away to help drive sharing of the event hash tag #MCRTunneltoBarbados.

Virgin Holidays’ retail staff were also on site to secure sales leads from the public.

As a result this PR campaign achieved 19 pieces of coverage including the Mail Online, OK Magazine, Hello magazine, The Mirror, Daily Star and two pieces in the Manchester Evening News – resulting in a combined circulation of 400 million.

Five tweets were also made by Michelle Keegan, #MCRTunneltoBarbados was trending on twitter in Manchester plus tweets of support were given from The Sun (Manchester office) I Love MCR, Manchester Gazette, Manchester Evening News, CityLife, Reveal & Hello!

Sipsmith Gin Host Winter Lounge Sessions

Step away from the hustle and bustle of London life and the harsh cold winter winds to find yourself in a cosy hygge embrace. Back in December, The Fellow Geronimo Pub (located near King's Cross station) joined forces with Sipsmith's, passionate pioneers of London’s artisan gin to bring back the pioneering hot gin experience for ‘ginthusists’ and to create a cosy winter drinking lounge. The purpose of the pop up event is not only to give city-dwellers a warm winter experience and share Sipsmith’s specialist winter drinks, but also to place Sipsmith into the minds of people ahead of the busy Christmas shopping season.

The brand launched the Sipsmiths pop up lounge on November 24th which was open to the general public until December 31st. Guests were able to discover some of Sipsmith’s winter warmers alongside staple favourites, in a setting that includes a roaring fire. On the launch day, the Sipsmith team were on hand to guide guests through the history of gin punches and the menu for the month. Sipsmith has done a couple of pop up lounges now, dotted all over London as they have been really successful and have received a lot of praise and I’m sure we are going to see a lot more!

Guests had the opportunity to taste a number of creations and become immersed in a brave new world of hot gin. The Fellow Geronimo Pub received lots of good reviews on its page, one being “Perfect evening for Gin lovers – I have been converted to Sipsmith”. The event didn’t get much coverage but the same event held at Ham Yard Hotel Roof Terrace in Soho, received a lot of coverage in the Metro online, Timeout London online and The Times.

PR Campaigns – The Good, The Bad and The Viral

The time has come again where we give you a fresh new round up of good, bad and viral campaigns. This week we have looked at some wonderful workouts, a confusing tube sign, an unusual dining setting and two very different hair product endorsement campaigns.

POM #wonderfulworkouts

Health juice drink ‘POM Wonderful’ was set to launch a single serving bottle and they wanted this new product to engage with a broad female audience who had general interest in healthy, fitness and functional foods. To do this it hired Escapade PR to create a fun PR campaign that would attract great brand awareness.

To connect with its target audience the agency decided to collaborate with personal trainer and apprentice candidate Katie Bulmer-Cooke to create four ‘wonderful workout’ exercise videos.  These videos were created with the brand ethos in mind:

‘Small lifestyle changes can have a huge impact on your health and wellbeing’.

They were short in length but aimed to be powerful in content. These videos were a hit with many bloggers and YouTubers including ‘A Mummy Too’ who blogged about these short and simple exercises for her vast amount of followers to copy and try out for themselves.

This simple PR campaign gained much attraction and coverage, with 26 pieces of coverage and 145,700 impressions across Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo.

Amazon High-jacks Westminster Tube Station and Confuses Tourists

Londoners were left puzzled after tube station Westminster appeared to be renamed ‘Webminster’ overnight in a PR stunt. Amazon replaced tube signs with a new name to advertise the launch of a new London internet service to help businesses. Many confused tourists and travellers noticed the swapped signs and questioned what was going on – with many taking to Twitter to voice their concerns.

Buxton Water previously created a similar stunt whereby Canada Water tube station was renamed to ‘Buxton Water’ during the London Marathon. This stunt received a similar reception with many people highlighting the impractical nature of it when it came to tourists. The Webminster campaign was covered by The Evening Standard and Metro.

Table For One? How About 20 Strangers Instead?

With the rise of solo travel trending in 2017, we like this ‘social experiment’ (PR campaign) from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines which worked to engage solo travellers at the airport.  Unlike railway stations and trains, or even buses, where co-passengers tend to break the ice sooner rather than later, airports and flights can be cold and lonely if you're not travelling with family members or friends.

KLM decided to break the ice at the time of year most associated with being surrounded by friends and family – Christmas. KLM gave its advertising agency the following brief: instead of being preoccupied with mobile phones or books, what would it take to convince single travellers in this festive season to bond with strangers and create some delightful memories?

Enter the Bonding Buffet. Like all powerful advertising ideas, at the heart of the Bonding Buffet (seeing past the questionable name of course) lies simplicity and hearty human insight. A giant buffet table laid out with Christmas dinner - all a lofty 4.5 metres up in the upper echelons of Amsterdam Airport. The table would only come down to acceptable human reaching and eating level once all 20 seats had been filled.

The whole event was videoed and shared on social with some astounding view rates including 12.75 million views on YouTube and 57 million views on Facebook.  KLM definitely wasn’t lonely this Christmas!

The Power of Product Endorsement

Endorsing products can have both a positive and negative return, depending on who’s endorsing the product or what the product is. These two campaigns show very different approaches, both focusing on different hair products…

Lidl Bit Strange Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton’s stardom didn’t come to light in a positive grace despite her Father owning the well-known Hilton hotel chain. Moving on from her promiscuous past, Paris Hilton has been working with Lidl to promote her range of hair styling products.

Before Christmas, hotel chain heiress Paris Hilton brought out a hair styling line with budget supermarket Lidl, which included a pink hairdryer, straighteners, curlers and a heated hair brush. The American star, announced the range on Twitter, with a snappy video in which she walks through a door, looks around a bit and flicks her hair from side to side.

Fans have been left rather surprised by the move. Paris is usually seen to be used to the finer things in life, so working with German discount supermarket – Lidl – was definitely a surprising move.

“OMG, I thought this was a joke? Lol,” said one fan on Twitter. Another said “Aldi is better.”

Consumers seemed confused with Paris’ new partnership with Lidl. Could this have be due to the lack of screen time Hilton has had over the past year or could this have been a campaign where consumers could experience a glimmer of the high life by purchasing one of her products. Regardless of the intention and motivation, this new line by Paris has been featured in titles such as Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Huffington Post, OK Magazine, and Scottish Daily Record.

Kirstie Alley Takes to Twitter to Rave About Rain Lillie Castor Oil

It's not every day that a Hollywood actress promotes a small business without being paid, but that's exactly what happened to Rain Lillie Castor Oil, an organic beauty product that has received two Twitter shout-outs from Kirstie Alley.

"In LOVE with this product... NOT a paid sponsor, just a huge fan!" Alley Tweeted on November 27th. Less than an hour later, Alley followed up with, "I mean, weird pic but my hair is 50% fuller now! No extensions, NO tricks… & I'm ancient :)"

Despite Alley saying they weren’t sponsored posts, there is speculation that she was paid to write those tweets.

Rain Lillie launched back in the summer of 2015 and has claimed to not have paid any celebrities to promote the product.

Something as simple as a Tweet can bring great simple promotion to a product. However something as simple as a celebrity’s reputation can really boost sales too.

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

With the beginning of a new month upon us, we’ve got a range of new and exciting, successful campaigns to share, focusing on travel intern-ships, an interactive health billboard, a frozen food campaign that has taken a new approach to finding time for ourselves and an innovative service that everyone believed was a hoax, but is now due to launch in 2018.

Swedish Billboard That Coughs at Smokers

A Swedish pharmacy chain has used a digital advertising board to cough at passers-by who smoke. The ad board uses extremely sensitive smoke detectors and when activated it plays a video of people coughing. The idea behind the stunt is to encourage people to carry out their new year’s resolution to quit smoking.

Although the company’s intention is to encourage people to stop smoking, it seems that the stunt also unintentionally shames members of the public. Due to this, the public has been divided on whether the campaign is ethically sound. Either way, the campaign has garnered a lot of attention for the company - so in PR terms it is a success. The campaign has been featured on The Mirror Online, the Huffington Post and The Express Online. We wonder if this would be as successful if it was run in the UK?

All Aboard for the Best Intern-ship!

This campaign offers the perfect antidote to the January blues as it whisks us away to the promise of golden, Caribbean beaches, sparkling waters, food and drink and even the promise of money.

Royal Caribbean, the luxurious cruise company, has pipped the rest to the post by claiming 2017's first 'best job of the year' stunt. Although these stunts are now quite commonplace with more ‘best jobs’ around than ever before, this one does stand out from the crowd as it was promoted on instagram and is hiring for Instagram.

Royal Caribbean announced that it was looking to recruit an intern via Instagram to ‘work’ on three of its cruise ships over the course of three weeks. The lucky recruit will get free food, drink and flights and also a healthy £3,000 in cash. Their role whilst on board the cruise ships, travelling across the oceans, will be ‘a hybrid between a photographer, documentary maker and storyteller’ - that can be translated to 'taking envy-inducing pictures and sharing them on Royal Caribbean's Instagram account'.

Royal Caribbean UK Managing Director Ben Bouldin has said, ‘our cruise holidays are filled with extraordinary moments and we want to find a talented storyteller who can help us capture the unique experiences that make holidays so special.’

What’s really interesting about this campaign is that Royal Caribbean has only chosen instagram as a platform for this activity – typically the age of the average cruiser is over 50 whilst recent statistics show that 90% of Instagram users are under the age of 35. The Instagram ‘job’ comes after research reveals the platform has redefined the way people book holidays. The research behind the decision comes from a poll commissioned by Royal Caribbean to find out whether or not social media is overtaking traditional channels of inspiration such as holiday brochures and comparison sites. We’re very sure that Royal Caribbean knows what it’s doing here but we would like to understand the inner workings; is the brand attempting to draw in a younger crowd? Are under 35’s influencers on the over 50s? My money goes on wealthy families looking to take that last family holiday before their kids fly the nest, they want something fancy that everyone will enjoy and Royal Caribbean seems like a good option – they are on Instagram after all – they must be cool!

The coverage has been excellent so even if the Instagram route is flawed at least they’ve achieved a broad wave of PR off the back of this campaign. So far, we’ve spotted the piece in Condé Nast Traveller, Mirror, Metro, Express, Daily Star, CNBC and other media titles around the world.

Amazon Prime Air is Flying Sky High!

In 2013, Amazon Prime announced that it would be creating a brand new delivery service to add to its forever growing company – by flying drones through the air to deliver packages! Press and consumers all believed that this was a PR stunt to see Amazon as an innovative and forward thinking company. But not many believed that it would follow through with the idea.

Come December 16th 2016, Amazon Prime Air proved everyone wrong and launched its first successful delivery - by air - within 13 minutes! No press or consumers were invited to view the first flight, which may have been due to the possibility of the flight failing and would have looked bad on them; however Amazon filmed the successful delivery and has now shared its content with press.

While deliveries will be available seven days a week from mid-2018, the drones can only fly in daylight hours and in good weather. Currently, the trial is only open to two customers, but Amazon says it hopes to expand this service to dozens of customers in the coming months. For those customers, Prime Air is available for no extra cost. This service will offer customers a lot of benefits such as guaranteed delivery within 30 minutes and may possibly save money on delivery vans, however there are cons…

The drones can only carry items weighing less than 2.6kg and can only be delivered to those who own a large garden and who live near the delivery depot. There is currently only one delivery depot which is located in Cambridgeshire.

So is Amazon Prime Air as good as Amazon hoped after its first successful flight and being picked up by press? We’re not sure. Amazon has said however that with the official launch date not until 2018 there’s still plenty of time for any flaws to be ironed out.

On the back of the promotional video of its first flight, press such as The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Telegraph have covered the service before the official launch next year while bloggers and technology experts have been invited to the main depot in Cambridgeshire to see the service first hand.

Will Amazon Prime Air fly sky high or will it plummet to the ground? We believe it will be a great success if it continues to trial the service over the coming year and something that Amazon can add to its building reputation.

Frozen Food and Beauty….an Unlikely Pairing?

Frozen food brand, LowLow Ready Meals, wanted to deliver a stand out one month campaign in January during the New Year diet season. The brand wanted consumers to see frozen foods as a healthy option and that it isn’t just fresh food that’s good for you.

The brand wanted to broaden the appeal of LowLow’s frozen meals across its target demographic of 30 – 54 year old women and overall build brand awareness of the range.

The unlikely part of this campaign was that the frozen food brand decided to team up with ITV’s This Morning’s celebrity make-up artist Bryony Blake to have as their brand ambassador.

We know what you’re thinking, frozen food and beauty - it doesn’t quite blend however the campaign was called ‘Take 5 and make a difference’ and its aim was to encourage consumers to spend an extra 5 minutes on themselves – whilst it took 5 minutes for the frozen ready meal to cook in the oven. This included quick and easy 5 minute beauty and make-up tips provided by Bryony.

To support this campaign the PR agency ran a social media campaign including a live Facebook chat with Bryony herself. A dedicated micro site was also created which included many ‘how to’ videos and make up tips.

Furthermore two media events were hosted ahead of the official campaign launch during which journalists could meet with LowLow development chefs, sample the range and learn about the ‘Take 5 and make a difference’ campaign direct from Bryony Blake herself.

Plus, to top it all off, competitions ran throughout January in TV Choice and across five women’s lifestyle websites.

The results? The campaign reached over 30 million potential consumers, achieved 70 pieces of coverage including OK!, Daily Mail, The Sun, Metro, Woman’s Own and Real People. The social media campaign reached 330,000 consumers and the competition attracted more than 144,000 entries.

The success of the campaign is definitely owed to using Bryony Blake as a brand ambassador, without her we’re not sure it would have achieved the same success. We’re not entirely sure on the frozen food, beauty combination however it evidently works - so hats off to this PR agency!

PR Campaigns - The Good, The Bad and The Viral

We are kicking off the New Year with positive, upbeat campaigns as January is well known for being the most depressing month of the year – urgh! Despite us all throwing down the chocolate, cake and alcohol this month and frantically grabbing the fruit and veg, we have all chosen campaigns that relate back to food!

David Lloyd – Run For Your Bun PR Campaign

Every New Year sees an influx of ‘new year, new you’ themed PR stunts along with campaigns that have a huge emphasis on health and weight loss.

This January, health centre and gym company David Lloyd is offering its members the unique opportunity to earn their food in exchange for working up a sweat. Following new research that reveals that the average office worker spends 90% of their working day sat down and not moving, David Lloyd Clubs is launching a new café giving customers the chance to ‘pay’ for their lunch with a six-minute micro workout. The café, called ‘Run For Your Bun’, aims to encourage workers to be more active during the working day and highlight the important role that a balanced diet and regular exercise plays in a healthy lifestyle.

Diners will be invited to choose a lunch item from the menu prior to beginning a high intensity interval workout to be used as their method of payment for the meal. Once the workout has been completed, guests are then invited to take a seat in the café area and refuel with their delicious chosen lunch.

The quick ‘HIIT’ (high-intensity interval training) workout includes one-minute on a rowing machine, one minute on a spin bike and one minute on a treadmill, as well as 60-seconds of sit-ups, bodyweight squats and lunges, with 30-second rest periods between each exercise.

The lunch options at Run For Your Bun:

• Smashed avocado with cherry tomatoes, goats cheese, chilli and lime on toasted wholemeal bread
• Giant couscous with apricots, raisins, pine nuts, lemon, coriander and fresh basil with a balsamic dressing
• Grilled chicken breast burger with tomato, red onion and garlic mayo
• Pitta pockets with mixed salad and a choice of smoked salmon or grilled halloumi filling

Run For Your Bun café was open to the public on Wednesday 11th, Thursday 12th and Friday 13th January, between 11:40am and 3pm each day. The first session sold out due to the great PR coverage that this campaign has received.

A Lighter Way to Start the Year

With talk of Blue Mondays, diets and detoxing we welcomed the new outdoor advert from Maltesers. The nation’s favourite ‘Lighter Way to Enjoy Chocolate’ brand has been championing disability and promoting inclusiveness for a while now with its ‘Look on the Light side of Disability’ campaign. The campaign kicked off last year with Maltesers featuring disabled actors in its TV commercials. Mars consulted disability charity Scope while developing the ads and said it wanted to open a conversation with other brands about how to better represent the UK's diverse population through advertising.

World Braille Day is on the 4th January every year and to mark this year, Maltesers created a special build OOH (out of home) advert display at a Farringdon bus station in London, to raise awareness of the day and of course promote the brand as well. The billboard advert is made entirely of braille and is the latest addition to the campaign, which also saw the first ever TV advert to air completely in sign language.

We think it’s great that such a big name, household brand is breaking down barriers by normalising disability with its advertising and communications strategy – and even better adding a sprinkle of humour.

Whitworths: Shot Property

PR agency WPR was tasked with launching a new concept in healthier snacking – Shots by Whitworths.  Under 100 calories these were a hero product internally – and quickly became one externally too.

The challenge was to use the Shot products to secure product placement and sampling opportunities – with the overall objective of increasing awareness of the entire Whitworths snacking collection.

So, to stand out with key press contacts, the agency developed ‘snack time’ media packs – including a full range of products, complete with an alarm clock set to 11am, urging the press to remember ‘snack o’clock’. The packs were distributed through a series of one-to-one press briefings where they were well received – with titles such as OK!, Homemaker and Love It! tweeting photos of their own happy snack time moments.

In order to get the Shot products directly into the hands of consumers, WPR worked with the organisers of relevant events to distribute a total of 22,000 samples. This included product visibility at London Fashion Week, Red Magazine Fashion Evenings, Clothes Show Live, Ideal Home Show at Christmas and Prima – as well as key magazine editor events.

All this was accompanied by a strong trade focus to attract the attention of key buyers. They ensured that Whitworths’ spokespeople were leading commentary around healthier snacking and unique product offerings, during the launch period.

Following the press visits, key titles such as OK!, Healthy Food Guide, Morrisons Magazine, Your Home and Woman’s Own Diet Special all featured various flavours of the Shot products – and other snacking options within the range.

Trade wise, thanks to attendance at the Lunch! show and PR support, Shots were awarded the Gold in the innovation category.  This accolade has brought the product to the attention of even more key buyers and resulted in some brilliant new outlets for the brand.

Fair to say that Shots weren’t the only heroes for Whitworths that year.

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Made, Shared and Gave this Christmas

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies partnered with ‘Toys for Tots’ and Instagram Star Misterkrisp (Jessica Siskin) to help give joy to children in need. Kellogg's Rice Krispies encouraged families to embrace the holiday season of giving with the "Treats 4 Toys" program. For every Rice Krispies treat they made and shared using #Treats4Toys, Rice Krispies donated a gift to Toys for Tots to help bring a little joy to a child in need.

For every original photo posted to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram between September 26th 2016, and January 1st 2017, using #Treats4Toys, Rice Krispies donated $10.00 to Toys for Tots (up to $50,000 total), which was used to help buy toys for children in the US.

So who are Toys for Tots and Jessica Siskin?

Toys for Tots Foundation is the fundraising and support organisation for the US Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program. The foundation was created at the request of the US Marine Corps and has supported Toys for Tots since 1947. The mission of the program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to needy children in the community.

New York City-based food artist Jessica Siskin began making edible Rice Krispies Treat sculptures in December 2012. When Siskin realised that food colouring could be added to the side-of-the-box recipe, she felt an immediate impulse to make a Rice Krispies Treats shaped cheeseburger. She continued to experiment with Rice Krispies Treats recipes, techniques, and designs until Misterkrisp was born in October 2013.

Titles such as GoodHouseKeeping.com and Metro US and The Daily Mail UK have covered this generous, light hearted news story.