In 2011 Immobiliare.it wanted to increase its brand awareness and bring new traffic to its website through a powerful media relation strategy. To reach the goal, thinking out of the box had to be the rule. Real estate communication is traditionally focused on the house of your life. Immobiliare.it decided to talk about a different story: someone selling the house of your eternal life. From the site listings a sale emerged: a monumental tomb from 1800. Once the communication object was found, the next step was to define the right moment to make it public. Being a highly celebrated event by the Italian press, what better than Halloween? We decided to launch the press release on October 27th, right before the long 5 days Halloween holiday break; thanks to the object and the timing, the press note generated 385 clippings, 374 of which in the first 24 hours; the day after the launch, the news was on 29 dailies. The campaign, created without any budget, allowed the site to increase the direct traffic by 5% year over year and the iPhone app downloads of 30% in the 2 days following the launch. The PR elements are clear: we found news; we gave it to the media; and we got brand awareness and traffic on our website.

The press note, accompanied by several images of the tomb and published also on the site's Facebook page and Twitter account, was sent to a mailing list of almost 500 media on October 27th . It included both a link to the listing (fundamental to drive traffic) and the key messages of Immobiliare.it communication. The tomb was also a great occasion to highlight a sector of the site usually not covered by PR: commercial properties. Several burial service licenses were up for sale and integrating that info in the note gave to the story also a more playful news angle. After the launch, we organised a 2-day recall managing several interviews both with Immobiliare.it and with the realtor who was dealing the sale. Having different spokespersons gave us the opportunity to run concurrent interviews and reach even those media not willing to have a 'company' representative.

The press release generated 385 clippings, 374 of which in the first 24 hours. This made the 'online tomb' - as we like to call it now - one of the most popular topics on the Italian web during the Halloween period.

The day after the launch, the news was on 29 dailies and the corporate communication messages were included by the majority of the media. The campaign, created without any budget, obtained more than 20m media impressions and, despite having been communicated before a 5-day-holiday break, allowed the site to increase the direct traffic by 5% year over year and the iPhone app downloads of 30% in the 2 days following the launch.