Sleep tight with Travelodge

Today I want to talk about a campaign that is very clever and that has inspired me in the past when working on campaigns for my MA. I'm talking about the 'Sleep tight' campaign that Grayling did for Travelodge. 

Image taken from here

In 2010 Travelodge faced a more competitive environment in the hospitality sector and therefore needed to stand out through differentiation and to generate brand recognition. Grayling very cleverly thought that positioning Travelodge as 'sleep specialists' would guarantee newsworthiness. And they were right! Lack of sleep is something we discuss very often with family, colleagues, and friends. Moreover, lack of sleep and its consequences are often mentioned in newspapers and magazines. 

Grayling established a conversation with the public by collecting a 'sleep census'. Once the issue of the lack of sleep was made known to the audience, Traveldoge was suggested as the solution to the problem. The whole campaign aimed to promote Traveldoge as retailer of sleep; a 'Sleep Manifesto' was even created. 

Since the huge success of the first campaign, the concept has been expanded and developed further in the last two years, it has been used in other campaigns by Travelodge.

MY OPINION

I believe this campaign is simply brilliant. What Grayling did was exploiting an already newsworthy item, in order to suggest that the client was the solution to it. This is a great technique to make a company stand out. I feel like I have learnt a lot from this case study. If we can relate a client to something that is newsworthy per se and we can cleverly and creatively exploit it, half of the job for the media coverage is basically done. The news releases almost sell themselves, the online conversations are more or less guaranteed, and the TA's interest is assured. I think this technique is one of the most effective PR strategies - at least of my knowledge :) .

What do you think? I'd love to hear some of your thought about this PR technique :)

Reverse Riots

After the London riots last year, 14 to 25 year-olds have become the age group holding the worst reputation in the UK. This is why vInspired, a youth volunteer charity, launched the Reverse Riots campaign.

Reverse Riots is a 'Do something campaign' and encourages young people to show the society that they contribute positively to society on social networking sites. The campaign uses celebrity endorsement, including Paloma Faith and Plan B. Audience participation is also a big part of the campaign. Youngsters from all over the UK are invited to take a picture of themselves holding a piece of paper in which they state how they positively contribute to their community, spread it online and use the hashtag #ReverseRiots on Twitter. 

Some lucky participants will have the chance to win a number of prizes or replace the Twitter profile picture of a celebrity on the London riots anniversary. 

MY OPINION

I think this social media campaign is very smart and I really like the audience participation factor. It seems like it will generate the media interest necessary to make it noticeable to traditional media and become mainstream news. 

Images from here.

Cheddarvision

I want to start this collection of reviews with one of my favourite PR campaigns: Cheddarvision, by Bray Leino.

Dom Lane, Creative Director at Bray Leino, delivered a lecture at Bournemouth University in which I was lucky enough to sit in this year. He told us all about the campaign, so I'm happy to share the details I know.

THE ISSUE:

In the end of 2006, West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers were facing economic issues and needed a sales boost. The budget was small, but the situation severe. They decided to hire a PR consultancy to try to solve the issue.

THE SOLUTION:

With such a small budget (in the region of 5/10k if I remember correctly), Bray Leino needed to generate a simple original idea that could be executed at a low cost. 

Dom told he was sitting in a meeting with a client that produced wine and he suddenly had the idea of filming the growth of grapes and the process of making wine. Unfortunately the meeting's purpose was that of dismissing the agency for budgeting reasons. Right after the meeting, West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers called him to check how things were evolving with their account. He realised that the idea he had for the ex client could be applied to their key product - cheese.

Bray Leino set up a webcam in West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers' farm to film the maturing of the Cheddar. A micro site was launched to stream the video online. It quickly got viral. By the end of march 2007, the website hit over half a million visits. 


The cheese round got so famous that it was 'baptised' Wedginald. During the broadcast, Wedginal went to Glastonbury festival, received a Valentine's Day card, wore a red nose, opened a Facebook and Twitter account, and became a good-luck charm at the Rugby World Cup.

You can see a time-lapse of the famous cheese maturing from month 0 to 12 here. 

When Wedginald finally matured, it was auctioned off for Children in Need and sent to its buyer all the way to Australia, first class.

The success of the campaign was huge; in fact Bray Leino won the CIPR Pride Awards 2007. 


MY OPINION:


I believe this is a clear example of a creative campaign that has the 'viral factor' and that 'has legs'; that's why it worked. I guess we all dream of conceiving something that has the potential to get viral. However, we must never forget that viral is an effect. We can only produce intended viral material, spread it as much as we can and hope it will become viral... Let the magic happen. If it is good enough, the magic will happen.