Challenge – getting the attention of earned media:

Promoting a campaign with a fairly commercial message to the leading media outlets in Denmark – in short making the solar campaign relevant for journalists across relevant media types.

The strategy – Using a real experiment to create buzz among journalists

In order to break though in the earned media the strategy was to combine the solar experiment with a national survey that investigated and mapped how the Danes mood was influenced by the dark and cold winter. The findings were afterwards linked directly to the solar experiment and the two elements combined created a very strong and effective messaging framework, which was supported by third party experts (academia), who acted as ambassadors for the Solar campaign , which could be targeted a wide range of different media types in order to support the overall campaign and create a buzz in the Danish media.

The goals:

Positioning

To position Spies Solar campaign and Spies as a industry thought leader in all relevant media types, such as national media, local and regional newspapers, travel media and other special media.

Support

To support Solar campaign as much as possible by creating a earned media buzz for the campaign to drive traffic into the campaign site and increase the number of views of the campaign video.

Momentum

To continuously respond to media agendas that arise during the campaign and use PR to make use the media opportunities that arise during the campaign.

The idea was turned into an online film that was spread through YouTube primarily. Secondly, Spies launched it through their newsletter database, Facebook and Twitter account and also via their website, where also other shorter online films were launched to increase the overall impact of the campaign.

The avg. view through rate reached 50.72% (90.8 sec) and the play to end reached 44%, reaching a target group reach of 86%. Furthermore, the video achieved 2 YouTube honors:

#1 most viewed this month (nordic)

#2 most viewed this week (global)

Spies experienced a 332% increase in number of Likes and their Twitter activity rose by 300%. PR value reached 5 times the PR budget. 57% more people were likely to choose Spies for their next holiday and there was a 36% increase in people choosing Spies. Finally, bookings increased by 14% during the campaign period.