Our work.
We have worked with Manchester Pride, Rudy's, Six by Nico, Printworks, SEA LIFE, LEGOLAND, Chopstix, JW Lees, Macknade and more. We have launched products, filled venues, won awards and built reputations. Here is the proof.
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Chopstix was launching ready meals into the freezer aisle, where nobody was looking yet.
Chopstix launched its ready meals in Food Warehouse stores across the UK. We filmed a real shop rather than an advert: 640.9k reach from seven organic pieces, and another 692k from four influencer pieces.
So we filmed a real shop, not an advert.
Organic, UGC-style content and creators, for the Food Warehouse launch.
The numbers behind the impact
Reach from seven organic pieces across Instagram and TikTok
Engagements
More reach from four influencer pieces
It sold so well that the group's main brand took it on too
Chopstix launched its frozen ready meals in Food Warehouse stores across the UK, part of the Iceland group, and the job was to make some noise and build social proof for a range people hadn't tried yet.
The temptation with a retail launch is to over-produce it, but polish reads as an advert, and people scroll past adverts. So we filmed the honest version: a trip to the shop, straight to the freezer aisle, the whole range in the basket, then home to cook it, the way a real customer would.
Seven pieces across Instagram and TikTok reached 640.9k with more than 23.8k engagements. Then creators took it further, with four influencer pieces reaching another 692k. Trade titles including The Grocer, Asian Trader and KamCity covered the launch.
It sold so well that Iceland, the group's main brand, took the range on too.
Got a product landing on a shelf?
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Bath Shack was opening its first UK store, and “we've opened a shop” isn't news.
Bath Shack was opening its first UK showroom, in Cheadle. We found a different story for trade, business and consumer press and for creators: 19 pieces of coverage, 100% positive, and showroom visits up from 68 in April to 91 in June.
So we found a different reason for each audience to cover it.
First UK showroom, Cheadle, and more of the right people through the door.
The numbers behind the impact
Pieces of coverage
Readership
Positive sentiment
Showroom visits
Bath Shack told us what success looked like: a small number of new customers through the door each day, maybe three or four. That's the target for a showroom selling high-end bathrooms, where one order for a full bathroom is a big sale.
A new store is a very commercial message, and that's the worry in PR, because a shop opening isn't news to a journalist. So the first job was finding the reason each of them would care. For the trade press, a successful bathroom company arriving in the UK for the first time is a story in itself. For business media it's jobs and investment in the area. For consumer writers it's a place that looks great, a chance to try it, and human stories they can tell.
For influencers it's gold, because they're always on with the next reno. The creators we invited were renovating their own bathrooms, and one bought a shower head and a cabinet the first time she walked through the door!
Showroom visits rose from 68 in April to 91 in June.
Opening somewhere new?
What's the story for each person you need to cover it? Talk to us and we'll find it.
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WeBuyBricks needed the country to fall for a machine most people had never heard of.
WeBuyBricks needed the public to sell it their old LEGO® sets, so we made its Brick-O-Matic machine the story: 160.18 million PR reach, 64 pieces of coverage and a 378% jump in its own following in 12 days.
So we made the machine the story.
One media and influencer day in a Lancashire mill, and national news within weeks.
Photo: James Speakman
Results at a glance
The launch in numbers.
PR reach across regional, national, TV, broadcast and influencers
Pieces of coverage, including The Times, The i and BBC News
BBC North West Tonight, BBC Radio Lancashire, Newsround, 5 Live and 5 News
WeBuyBricks' own following in 12 days
Positive brand sentiment, across press and creators
WeBuyBricks is the biggest LEGO® brick reseller, and it needs the public to sell it the old sets sitting in their lofts. Its Brick-O-Matic, housed in a converted mill in Rawtenstall, uses AI to recognise 50,000 different LEGO® pieces and sort them at speed. It's believed to be the first machine of its kind in the UK, and almost nobody outside the business knew it existed.
A press release about a LEGO® reseller isn't news, even the biggest one. A British-built machine that finds the money hiding in your loft is. We trained the spokespeople, then ran a media and influencer day at the machine's home, with each outlet given the angle that suited it: the technology, sustainability, the money in your attic, or the nostalgia.
The Times covered it, and broadcast followed, from BBC North West Tonight and Newsround to 5 News and Radio 5 Live. Twenty creators made content from the day, with a combined following of 48,000, and WeBuyBricks' own following grew 378% in 12 days. None of it was paid for.
Sitting on something worth pointing a camera at?
Most businesses have a Brick-O-Matic of their own, the thing they think is ordinary and everyone else would find fascinating. Talk to us and we'll help you find it.
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A 17% increase in sales for our client, Macknade
PR vs Meta. How will brands find a way to reduce their reliance on the churn of paid ads in 2024?
PR can meet your marketing objectives and drive the bottom line, if that’s what you want it to do.
See below for a case study that demonstrates how we have supercharged a brand’s sales at Christmas by generating organic coverage in the right media channels driving links, traffic and direct sales that smashed the client’s budget in this crucial sales period.
Brands seemed to be being sucked deeper and deeper into a reliance on Meta right now. December was chaos CPC rising, audiences being stretched and the new AI model just isn’t delivering right.
Facebook and Instagram have become almost wholly pay to play for businesses that focus their marketing hard on sales and leads and it’s creating a vicious circle of fear and spending.
I have lost count of how many people have told me that their 2024 goal is to find another channel that will enable them to step away from their reliance on Meta. Yet each one was reluctant to take the plunge and invest in other channels.
What are we doing?
ERM PR obviously!
But what can PR do?
Well it can do pretty much whatever you want it to do, if you know what that is. I mean, it can’t drive your car or make your lunch, but it can sell your car or convince everyone to eat at your restaurant for lunch.
Can it drive sales? Hell yes. All day long. If you set up the right campaign to drive sales that is.
It is all in the planning.
Why do you need PR?
Your PR objectives should be directly related to your marketing and business objectives. They should be achievable and measurable.
PR can...
Tell your brand's story and build a connection with your audience?
It can make news and reach new audiences
It can sell products and services - even sell them out with the right piece
It can tackle issues or change the direction of a narrative
It can tap into content creators and tastemakers who will endorse your products and shout about how much they love you to their armies of loyal followers
It can improve your SEO by creating links and driving traffic from websites with high domain authority
With our tailored approach to PR, we delve deep into understanding your brand's unique story and objectives, crafting campaigns that resonate with your audience and drive measurable results.
From media relations to influencer partnerships, we know the ins and outs of creating buzz and building meaningful connections.
Keen but still not sure how PR could help you? Why not book a free consultation with our team to map your marketing objectives for 2024 and we can show you how PR could be the solution to your Meta problems this year.
Salford Shopping Centre had been at the heart of Salford since 1972, and the city needed reminding.
Salford Shopping Centre has been at the heart of Salford since 1972. We built a press office around the people inside it, from new traders and a golden anniversary to over 4,000 food items for Salford Foodbank, with coverage in the MEN, BBC North West and Yahoo News.
So we made it the place where Salford's stories happen.
New traders, community campaigns and a golden anniversary, told to the people who live there.
The highlights
Food items donated to Salford Foodbank at Christmas
Years marked with the centre's first artist in residence
Plus BBC North West, Yahoo News and That's TV
A shopping centre that has been open for fifty years can easily become part of the furniture. Salford Shopping Centre needed local people to see it as theirs again, and new traders to see a reason to choose it.
We built a press office around the people inside it. The Market Hall's family traders told their own stories about keeping decades-old stalls going. When Sports Traider opened Britain's first chain of charity sports shops at the centre, with everything £5 or less, it made the Manchester Evening News and BBC North West, and the MEN covered the queues when Mother Hubbard's chip shop opened too.
At Christmas, the centre worked with the supermarkets under its roof to give over 4,000 food items to Salford Foodbank. For its golden anniversary in 2022, it appointed its first artist in residence, local painter Chelsea Entwistle, whose commission brought the centre's old shops back to life, and That's TV covered the celebrations. Free book giveaways for primary school children, a clothes swap that reached Yahoo News and a new centre manager announced in the retail trade press kept the story going year after year.
"These are particularly hard times for many people, particularly in our community, and this year we felt compelled to do something that would directly benefit the lives of people in Salford."
Nick Pitt, Centre Manager, Salford Shopping Centre
Running a centre that should feel more like part of its community?
Talk to us about the stories already happening under your roof.
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Freeport Fleetwood was an outlet centre the Fylde Coast had fallen out of love with.
Freeport Fleetwood, Realm's marina-side outlet centre, had lost its locals. We built the campaign around the people of Fleetwood, and the centre had its best year in 11, traded fully let for the first time in seven years and was named Retail Business of the Year.
So we gave the people of Fleetwood a reason to come back, and the centre had its best year in 11.
Local faces, big events and a press office that never stopped, for a marina-side outlet eight miles from Blackpool.
The highlights
In 11 years for the centre, in 2016
For the first time in seven years
Record footfall, up nearly 6% on the year before
Retail Business of the Year, Red Rose Awards
We worked across Realm’s portfolio of outlet and shopping centres, and Freeport Fleetwood is where the results stood out. The outlet centre sits on the marina at Fleetwood, anchored at the time by M&S, Next and Gap alongside more than 40 other outlet brands. When Realm took over, its local shoppers were still coming but less often, lapsed customers had stopped coming at all, and the store line-up had not changed in a while. Being outdoors and eight miles north of Blackpool, footfall rose and fell with the seasons and the weather, and almost every tenant was on a turnover lease, so every extra sale mattered to everyone.
We started by finding out why people had stopped coming. Focus groups with regular and lapsed customers, social media analysis, store sales, footfall data, tenant feedback and a brand values session gave us a new strategy for the centre and one tone of voice for everything it said.
Then we built the campaign around the people of Fleetwood. Local people modelled in our fashion shoots, a partnership with the local paper put new-season fashion in front of its readers every quarter, and the Best of British weekend kept footfall high after the school holidays ended. Busking on the bus to promote the Lytham Festival, a Blue Monday hunt for blue hearts and two animatronic T. rexes loose around the centre at Halloween, live with BBC Radio Lancashire, gave the press a reason to keep coming back. We kept every retailer in the loop so they could make the most of each moment, and we wrote the award entries too.
Sales in 2015 were 5% ahead of 2014, total turnover was the highest in ten years, and footfall reached almost 1.3 million, up for the second year running. 2016 went further. From Black Friday the centre saw an 18% increase in sales and a 25% increase in footfall, Christmas week footfall was up 32%, and Sports Direct, Bonmarché and The Body Shop opened, so the centre traded Christmas fully let for the first time in seven years. The Blackpool Gazette reported it as the centre’s best year in 11.
Along the way the centre was named Retail Business of the Year at the Red Rose Awards, won the Large Retailer award at the Radio Wave Culture and Lifestyle Awards, which the public votes for, picked up a Marketing Lancashire award and was shortlisted for the Retail Experience Award at the Lancashire Tourism Awards.
"2015 has been a fantastic year for us at Freeport Fleetwood. I am delighted that we have continued to grow in all areas of the business, building on the success of 2014 to generate our highest turnover for the last ten years."
John Magee, Centre Manager, Freeport Fleetwood (Realm)
Running a centre your locals have stopped visiting?
Talk to us about finding out why, and giving them a reason to come back.
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