Just-Eat, the UK’s largest online takeaway ordering company, tasked Brands2Life with raising awareness of the service in the run up to The X Factor final weekend – the biggest TV event of the year and also the weekend when the UK orders the most takeaways.

With The X Factor final dominating both the entertainment and regular news pages in the media for the whole of December, Brands2Life decided on a news-hijacking mechanic to propel Just-Eat into the minds of The X Factor viewing, takeaway eating public.

A two-stage campaign was initiated. Firstly, 1,500 of Just-Eat’s customers were polled online as to who they thought was going to win The X Factor, whether they were going to watch the final, and if they were, were they going to order a takeaway?

Secondly, Brands2Life commissioned food artist, Prudence Staite, to immortalise the four finalists (and Wagner) in pizza form.With ingredients matching their personalities, the pizzas created included the Matt Feast, the Mozz-Cher-ellla, and the One Dough-rection.

The story was a huge hit. The information gained by polling Just-Eat customers created the headline-grabbing statistics needed to land the story onto the news pages, whilst the quirky pizza portraits - had the necessary humour to bring the features home. With the front page of the Mirror Online and branded coverage on Daybreak leading the way and the Matt Feast pizza even appearing on The X Factor final (watched by 20 million people), the media coverage led to real tangible business benefits for Just-Eat; as they gained their biggest sales ever on X Factor Final weekend.

In the summer of 2010, Brands2Life was challenged with launching T-Mobile’s new customer loyalty scheme, Night In, a movie and game rental offer with Blockbuster. Our brief was to increase awareness and redemptions for the deal and find T-Mobile customers to star in the supporting advertising campaign. 

As Night In was designed to improve the time customers spend at home with friends and family, we decided to bring this idea to life by using the focal point of a night in, the sofa. We created a giant settee, almost as big as a double-decker bus, turning London’s Covent Garden into a huge front room and invited girl band of the moment, The Saturdays, to climb on board.

The colossal couch combined with one of the UK’s biggest pop acts provided the perfect vehicle for a photocall. A media scrum ensued as hundreds of people queued to audition for the ad campaign. 

The stunt achieved huge coverage numbers saturating the nationals with pieces appeared in The Daily Mirror, Daily Star, The Guardian (picture of the week), Main Online, Telegraph Online and Metro Online. Broadcast coverage included Capital FM, Heart FM, Live at Studio Five and Living TV and the story was also covered by lifestyle media such as OK!, Now and Heat.

The T-Mobile Big Sofa then went on tour, to Birmingham and Leeds, allowing hundreds more Brits to audition for the adverts. We also recruited Great Britain and Leeds Rhino’s star Jamie Peacock to tackle the sofa, generating a big splash in the Yorkshire Evening Post.

To date the campaign has achieved over 100 pieces of coverage, with a reach of over 170 million people.

 

 

 

Surely, suggesting to a software vendor that it’s time to get IT off the boardroom agenda is counter-intuitive? But experience told us that IT only hits the boardroom when things go wrong.

We wrote a white paper showing how VMware’s cloud and virtualisation solutions could transform IT into a catalyst for positive change. Our dedicated micro-site hosted the report, together with video testimonials from VMware customers and senior executives. 

The paper was launched at a top-tier media briefing and shared with bloggers and social media channels. The result was a Financial Times feature plus 30+ technology and business media items. The micro-site attracted thousands of hits and 50 prospect names in the first week alone.

Many of our clients work with us on global or regional strategy and content as well as national programmes. Cisco Europe uses us to help execute its European PR programme as an extension of its in-house team.

The Broadband Quality Study is a project that showcases our work together at its finest. Broadband quality is recognised as a key ingredient in national productivity and competitiveness. Every year the Cisco study tests the quality of broadband quality in 66 countries and ranks them.

Our role is to help develop the storylines, create the content, support the 22 countries in their roll-out and present the story to the international media. In 2009 the Study achieved its greatest profile yet with 400 pieces of coverage globally including three pieces on the BBC Online and a half-page in The Financial Times. Other coverage achieved including top European national press such as Dagens Industri (Sweden), Berlingske Tidende (Denmark), Kauppalehti (Finland), Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy), de Telegraaf (Netherlands), Kathimerini (Greece) and La Libre Belgique (Belgium).

For three years we worked with Tesco to gain broadcast and national coverage for its latest products and offers. Working closely with the in-house PR team and the product/category managers, our goal was to use editorial to amplify the advertising and marketing message.

This task required a strong instinct for the news agenda, the ability to craft a stand-out story and exceptional media contacts. So, for example, when Tesco brought Action Man back to the UK for the first time in three years we put the story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph and when Wayne Rooney gave Colleen a £250,000 wedding ring we made sure that Tesco’s £11 ring was also mentioned in the stories. We were also charged with the creation of feature stories around key shopping periods – for example, we organised a group of school-kids to test out Tesco’s latest range of Xmas toys in a double page spread in The Mirror. On average we generated over 100 pieces of quality national coverage for Tesco every year.