Brief
Toby Carvery approached us in the run up to Christmas to help promote their takeaway Christmas dinners with national media relations.
With the tiered lockdown system in place across the UK and most pubs and restaurants closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Toby Carvery wanted to provide an option for diners to have their Christmas dinner cooked for them ready to eat at home. After all, we should all have the chance to spend some well-deserved family time together at this most wonderful time of the year.
Action
With a small budget and limited time available to us, we focused on a highly targeted regional and national press release and sell in.
In addition to a clickbait style title – helping us to pitch at the consumer tabloid press – and money saving tips, we also stressed that it was a limited time offer as diners only had until 23rd December to order – adding urgency to the release.
In the week leading up to Christmas, we reached out to our contacts in the national media, including the Sun, Mirror and LadBible Group.
Alongside this, we ran a targeted media relations sell-in with our regional contacts, speaking to titles across the UK where the Toby Carvery Christmas dinner takeaway was running. As many regional titles often syndicate their news pieces, we spoke to specific journalists that write for the ‘What’s On’ and ‘Food’ sections to increase our likelihood of widespread coverage.
Result
Our tactics worked well and we achieved 48 pieces of national, regional and digital coverage in the week leading up to Christmas. From this a highlight was our coverage in The Sun, which generated three pieces – one print and two online.
We also achieved a piece of coverage on Tyla, a news site which is part of the LadBible Group and we gained more than 40 pieces of coverage in regional media, both online and in print.
Alongside the print and online coverage, we also saw great results on social media with news sites such as the Sun posting the story onto Facebook. These stories got the nation talking and provoked good levels of interest, with the Sun pieces alone generating over 1,000 engagements. Across print, online and social we achieved a reach of over 300 million people.
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