Delivering press coverage on a global scale
Following our campaign with the Loch Ness Centre this summer, Alastair Campbell called Nessie Scotland’s ‘Golden Goose’ on his ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast, saying it was ‘PR of the highest order’, and even gave the Centre’s General Manager, Paul Nixon, a shoutout for his fantastic yellow suit. Admittedly, it felt nice to get praise from someone like Alistair Campbell, but what exactly did we do to deserve it?
Following a £1.5 million investment in the Loch Ness Centre and Deepscan cruises from leading UK tourist attraction manager Continuum Attractions, we were tasked with delivering global coverage to bring tourists to the centre.
Loch Ness Centre were arranging ‘The Quest’ – a weekend of events at the end of August arranged in partnership with Loch Ness Exploration’s (LNE), an independent and voluntary research team, for volunteers to search the famous waters of Loch Ness and uncover its mysteries.
We knew there is always interest in Nessie, but we wanted to make sure we had something that would capture the attention of the world.
After research, we found out that we could position ‘The Quest’ as the largest search in over 50 years with new technology being used to search the waters of the Loch – this was the hook we were looking for.
Through strong media relations when we launched ‘The Quest’ we secured significant global media coverage.
One week from the event, we drafted a further press release calling for Monster Hunters across the globe to sign up and watch the live web cams of the Loch over the weekend, and search for anything unexplained.
Over ‘The Quest’ weekend, we managed media invites and the media schedule pre and during the weekend, with media on site from the Washington Post to German broadcasters ZDF and Australia’s ABC.
Finally, Following the weekend, we followed up with media once again with details of findings from the weekend, keeping the legend of Nessie well and truly alive.
Over a 4-week period, we generated over 2,300 pieces of coverage with media secured across the globe, including New York Post, Washington Post, BBC, and The Guardian and over 192 pieces of broadcast coverage including Good Morning America, BBC Radio 2, BBC Breakfast and Sky News.
During the period, over 6,000 people visited the Quest part of the Loch Ness Centre website, and over 200 people volunteered to take part in the hunt arriving from countries including the US, Canada, Poland, and Denmark, and over 300 people from across the world watched the live stream.
So what can we learn this?
It’s not every day you get a world-famous beast as part of your PR arsenal, but there are lessons to learn, we took an event and elevated it with a key hook on being the ‘biggest’, we also created several story moments to keep up momentum, and maybe most importantly we made the event open to everyone with a live stream making the event truly global.
If you want to hear how we can help elevate your PR and stories, get in touch. And if you want to hear what Alastair Campbell had to say about the campaign, you can hear it here from 10.50:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6FDw1P3LZiiDlSMLZHojre?si=EjO6kYTLSsOREiiI7uhOSg