Jura is a little island just off the Scottish coast. It’s the place where George Orwell wrote 1984, and he described it as ‘the most ungettable place on earth’. As such it’s widely regarded as the last place you’d set up a whisky distillery.

However despite all this, Jura whisky has gone on to be the second biggest single malt in the world. This spirit of being the plucky outsider that takes on the big boys has become a cornerstone of our brand values and we are always looking for opportunities to demonstrate this.

In July 2013 one of our fans noticed that Jura had disappeared from Google Maps. We wanted to put all of our PR might behind this discovery so together we could take on the goliath that is Google, and get everyone behind the fight to put the isle of Jura back on the map!

Within an hour of hearing the news we had created a pin-the-tail-style game for everyone to guess where Jura should be on the map. The entries were sent directly to Google’s Geospatial Technologist along with a bottle of the good stuff, demanding our reinstatement.

The live campaign generated huge social noise, gaining coverage across the BBC as it happened and even became a full story in the historic magazine the Atlantic.

A campaign that took an hour to conceive kickstarted a movement, huge media value and led to Google’s public apology and the reinstatement of Jura.

The challenge was first launched through Jura’s social channels very quickly. To make the story bigger in social we selected key influencers, sent them a bottle of Jura, and a letter telling them our story and a map so they could join in.

We invited the BBC to cover the story, which they promptly did, helping to make it a global matter. We found out who was in charge of Google Maps, and sent all of the entries directly to him, along with a bottle of Jura. Ed Parsons saw how many people had got behind the cause, realised we couldn't be ignored and publicly issued this apology:

“Huge Kudos to the #findJura campaign, a quite brilliant opportunity to add to our embarrassment. Please pass on my thanks and apologies to the islanders for flooding them on Google Maps” Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist

The campaign that was developed in an hour gave us 2.8m Twitter impressions and a reach of 4,287,850 against all of the additional PR coverage, with notable names being the BBC and the Huffington Post. Which for a campaign costing £500 gave us an equivalent media value of £214,393.

A campaign that took an hour to conceive kickstarted a movement, huge PR and media value and led to Google’s public apology and the reinstatement of Jura. It also brought awareness to Jura in the most on-brand way possible.