Outstanding results every time
Brand | Content | PR
Creating awesome content and meaningful connections...
Brand Building / Tech PR
When app PetrolPrices was looking to build awareness of and traffic to its app, we created a campaign focused on driving national and regional news stories.
From news creation, newsjacking, trade show support and industry commentary, activity included reacting to changes in market pricing, to identifying the cheapest and most expensive areas to buy fuel to creating exclusives stories with the Sunday Times on motorway station pricing and the Daily Mail on driving being cheaper than train travel.
In total the 3 month campaign delivered over 100 pieces of coverage, which broke down as 20 national news pieces, 76 regional pieces, 5 trade / specialist pieces. During the time the campaign ran, usage of the app grew by 60,000 monthly active users, equating to a 70% increase - all of which was attributed to the brand comms campaign.
Creating awesome content and meaningful connections for brands and businesses is my thing.
I've been lucky enough to work on some really exciting brands and projects over the last 20 years. Below is just a sample of the kind of work I have been involved in - some of it big, some of it small. Some of it freelance PR, content marketing and brand communications work under the Collaborative Folks banner and some of it from my former lives in both agency and in-house.
All of it I'm proud of.
Engaging influencers
Sponsorship / Influencer Engagement
To drive further awareness of the AO.com brand amongst ABC1 women, I negotiated a two year partnership between AO.com and leading interiors magazine Living Etc's House Tours event.
While providing great opportunities for brand exposure in the magazine, it also created a clever opportunity to engage with key interiors influencers - after all who wouldn't want to miss a chance to have a nosey around some of the amazing homes that had featured in the magazine.
So after dressing rooms in the homes with AO branded product, my team hosted a blogger meet up each year for 15 key influencers hosted by one of the UK's top interiors bloggers. The brand drove awareness, coverage, links and traffic, engaging an audience with a strong propensity to buy high value items.
Cooking up influence for AO.com
Influencer engagement & outreach
When AO.com wanted to elevate the SEO and general awareness of its food prep category, my strategy was to focus on getting quality links via two strands of activity - product placement on high authority editorial sites and influencer engagement focused on mid-ranking bloggers. I identified the trend for clean living and the role of small domestic appliances in food prep and used it as a key hook. Media relations took care of the product placement but to entice bloggers to engage with the products, needed the extra mile.
An AO.com Clean Living Event hosted by leading influencer Naturally Sassy was created. Nine influencers from the beauty, health and fitness world were invited to attend. All blogged about the event generating links and editorial. Watch the video here, or read about it on the AO Life content hub.
Barleycup & Veganuary
B2C / Food & Drink / Influencer
When health drink, Barleycup wanted to emphasise it’s vegan credentials, we worked with the brand to identify five vegan micro-influencers to talk about the drink’s versatility during veganuary, positioning it as the ideal winter hot beverage.
The content delivered was a mix of blog and insta posts focused on product reviews and the recreation of the influencer’s favourite coffee serves using the product alongside dairy alternative milks.
Driving CarFinance 247's employer brand
Employer branding
When CarFinance 247 wanted to stand out in a highly competitive recruitment market, where they had limited brand awareness and low organic applications, it looked to relaunch it's employer brand. With its purpose and DNA recently defined, I was brought on board as a freelance PR consultant, working in-house with the people team two days a week to define and implement a 247People comms strategy. My brief was to launch the new purpose and DNA, driving awareness of the employer brand, focusing on a millennial audience and tech roles.
My plan focused on six content pillars. These were then amplified via PR, internal comms, LinkedIn charity partnerships, awards, speakeropportunities, Glassdoor and content marketing. The activity delivered mass regional PR coverage, which in turn drove organic applications and appointments. LinkedIn proved a key channel and saw a 153% increase in impressions, 286% increase in comments, 139% increase in content shares and 58% increase in followers over a four month period. Page views on Glassdoor increased by 80% and impressions hit 216,216 during the same time period.
Getting franchisees on brand
Employer Brand / Franchise PR
Venture is a franchised business that creates premium portraits. As a multi-stakeholder organisation, it faced many communications challenges and my brief was to reinvigorate internal communications.
I launched Reveal, a new quarterly internal magazine, showcasing the best work, behaviours and people in a creative, fun and engaging way. It pushed the boundaries of what was expected of an internal newsletter, with a fun record size format giving it a high retention value.
Reader surveys showed that 97% of staff were inspired to get involved with Reveal and wanted to showcase their achievements / studio within it. Reveal also achieved finalist status in the CIPR Excellence Awards and CIPR Pride Awards.
Recruiting School Business Managers for Findel Education
Education / B2B Comms Strategy
GLS Educational Supplies & Hope Education’s 'Smarter SBM’ campaign launched in support of a business strategy to ‘save schools time and money.' Promoting a range of digital ordering solutions dubbed ‘Smart Ordering’, the campaign targeted 11,000+ overworked and under-appreciated School Business Managers (SBMs) nationwide.
My role was to identify and sign-up 10 real SBMs to sit as the ‘heroes’ at the heart of a through-the-line campaign and make the brands a valued resource to the SBM community. This was achieved through a content marketing campaign that encompassed a dedicated ‘Smart Hub’ blog, a SBM video series, social media activity, PR & editorial coverage, Education Executive magazine media partnership, regional events strategy. An SBM influencer engagement programme drove social media partnerships, blog and video content and competitions. The campaign contributed to a 10% uplift in Smart Ordering sign ups.