Travel and Leisure PR consultant Gloucestershire-based copywriter

Jess Cook hosted a table at the British Curry Awards on behalf of our client Koloshi. Head chef Azad Hussain was a finalist in the prestigious category of Chef of the Year. Our guests at the event for the evening included Gloucester Rugby’s Nick Wood & Nicky Robinson and their lovely partners Kate Wood and Lynsey Dalgleish

British Curry Awards 2011

One of our clients, The Montpellier Chapter, has produced a great video detailing the journey to reopening the hotel.  We were delighted to be a part of the relaunch of the hotel and this video brings back some fab memories.

Watch it here:

http://www.themontpellierchapter.com/explore/videos

Our lovely account director, Jess Cook, featured in this month’s Cotswold Style.  Check it out here…..  We are very proud!!

000 Through the Lens May 11_Low res

Following on from my last blog post, I thought it may be appropriate to share a few tips with journalists who are seeking freebies from travel PRs.

1)  Build up a rapport with the PRs before going in for the kill.

An email out of the blue to a PR requesting a free holiday goes down as well as an unsolicited press release landing in your inbox. Give the PR a ring before asking for the freebie, introduce yourself and do your homework.

2)  Find out what clients we represent

PRs are always being told to do their homework.  We spend a lot of time finding out what you write about and for who – so spend some time finding out who we represent and where our clients operate in the world.

3)  A journalist with a commission in the bag is a more inviting prospect than one without

We need to persuade our client as to why they should offer you a complimentary week at their luxury 5* resort.   They will also want to know that they are most likely going to get some sort of coverage at the end of their investment. Make sure your publication would be prepared to run your review on your return or you have a commission from a media outlet that will.   We are much more likely to entertain your request if this is the case.

4) Make sure your readership aligns with our clients target market

PRs have justify every freebie dished out to journalists.  Make sure that you write for a publication which the destination/hotel you are visiting would want to be featured in.  We are not going to send someone from Truckers Weekly to a couples retreat in Sri Lanka as quite simply no matter what coverage you could give us – it probably won’t boost visitor numbers!  Tell the PR about your publication, your readership and your usual style of reviews.     This will help us make your case to our client.

5)  Finally don’t be scared to ask. Just make sure you have done your homework first.

Just received the following email from a journalist.  I know journalist salaries do not mirror city bankers, but a free honeymoon in exchange for a potential ‘review’ which is yet to be placed????   Hmmmmm…… I know the phrase if you don’t ask, you don’t get rings true here.  However draw your own conclusions….

________

Dear Ms Rayer,

We are writing to offer our services as journalists to review a holiday for one of your clients as our honeymoon.

We both work in the regional press and are passionate about travel and writing.

We believe we would provide an interesting case study for your clients and are open-minded to destinations, timing, holiday-types and what publications our review would be used in.

We look forward to hearing from you if you are interested in our proposal.

Kind Regards,

One ballsy journalist!

If you happen to follow BetFairPoker on Twitter, 2011 has so far been a particularly amusing live feed. Regular tweets appear to have nothing to do with Betfair, or poker at all for that matter. Instead in the space of an hour one is greeted with such delights as ‘Today you are a life bailiff enforcing a warrant on complacency. Crowbar the lazy door and repossess the flat screen of opportunity’ and ‘Janice from HR brought in her son Jasper. He’s older than she is. I can never work out how that is possible’.

One could easily be forgiven for assuming the strange, silly and often pointless tweets look more like the actions of computer hackers who must have hijacked the feed. In fact this is exactly what Richard Bloch, Betfair’s international PR manager, wants us to believe. The tweets are part of a very deliberate strategy, one that has been in development for over six months now.

Jennifer Whitehead’s recent article for The Wall takes a closer look: http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/01/10/whats-the-thinking-behind-the-betfair-poker-twitter-feed/

Crucially, what Bloch and his team have realized is boring, corporate-sounding tweets are, well, exactly that. They fail to generate the kind of buzz and excitement which has fuelled the success of sites such as YouTube. The Betfair tweets are beginning to go viral – with hundreds of users re-tweeting the quotes back and forth to their friends.

So, now that Betfair has revealed that the Tweets were actually part of a corporate plan, do we believe they have covertly developed a new global marketing strategy? Personally, I prefer to still think it’s a few guys fooling around in an office who would rather play cards…

THE OPENING of Cheltenham’s newest hotel was celebrated in style on Friday night with the launch party of The Montpellier Chapter.   Silver Ball PR organised the event which was deemed a great success by our client and guests alike.

A total of 300 guests descended on the Bayshill Road establishment to toast the success of the hotel that has recently reopened after a multi-million pound refurbishment transforming it from its previous life as The Kandinsky.

Silver Ball PR’s favourite musician is Cheltenham-born Jake Hall.  He is an old family friend and an incredibly talented musician.  He has been tipped for great things and some people even describe him as the next Jamie Cullum.  View his latest video diary here…

The Silver Ball team is delighted to have won GOLD at the prestigious CIPR awards for our work which we have done with celebrity hairdresser Stuart Holmes.

Read the case study below:

Introduction

Celebrity hairdresser Stuart Holmes brought in Silver Ball PR to devise a strategy to help his Cheltenham salon achieve its core business objectives:

• Increase the number of new clients
• Improve awareness of the salon’s location
• Build relationships with local businesses
• Improve awareness of the Stuart Holmes brand nationally and in the trade.

The Hair Holiday Strategy

The management at The Stuart Holmes Hair and Beauty Spa were very clear in what they wanted to achieve. They wanted more than just regional coverage. They have always been proactive with the local media but they have found it difficult to achieve national coverage.

Silver Ball PR created a strategy to help Stuart Holmes forge strong relations with beauty and travel journalists. As well as stimulating wide ranging national coverage, Silver Ball PR wanted to position the salon in the industry press as a place of innovation.

Silver Ball PR created The Hair Holiday concept to capture the interest of the national, specialist and trade media. It was pitched as the opposite number to a traditional spa break.

We sourced two top Cheltenham hotels to partner with. They were a Mr and Mrs Smith hotel, Number 32, and the trendy townhouse hotel, The George. We negotiated rates with both properties and created a two-day package including accommodation and treatments.

A website dedicated to The Hair Holiday was created by Silver Ball PR. This proved a key part in marketing the package to the consumer and gave us somewhere to direct our Facebook and Twitter followers to. (www.stuartholmeshairholiday.co.uk)

Silver Ball PR sold in the concept to national travel journalists by positioning the break as a spa break with a difference. Highlighting Stuart’s celebrity clients sparked great interest.

The Hair Holiday concept was sold in to specialist wedding magazines as a great hen party idea or bridal treat.

To the trade media, we used the concept to demonstrate how The Stuart Holmes Hair and Beauty Spa is forward thinking and creative in its product offering and marketing. No one else in the industry was offering such a package.

Hair Holidays were offered to seven titles asa high value competition prize, worth more than £400 per person.

Creativity

The Hair Holiday is a unique concept created by Silver Ball PR. It is the ‘new’ type of spa break. We carried out intensive research and found no other spas offering packages focussing on hair.

The Hair Holiday was created predominately as a PR tool. It captured the imagination of national journalists who previously may not have been interested in writing about a regional hair salon.It provided a tangible getaway for travel writers to feature and an innovative experience that attracted the attention of beauty writers.What was predominately a PR tool, the Hair Holiday is now a package regularly sold by the salon.

Evaluation and Measurement.

The Hair Holiday concept resulted in nine press trips. Hosted by Silver Ball PR, they included a complimentary night at The George Hotel. Press trips were aligned with the key objectives and were only aimed at national media.

The Hair Holiday generated 17 pieces of on and offline coverage with more features still waiting to be published. Coverage included a full-page lead in The Sunday Telegraph, a half page in new! magazine and extensive coverage on The Times Online.Seven competitions were placed in titles including Hello! and My Weekly.

The advertising value equivalent of this campaign was excessive, coming in at £201,495.

Cost-Effectiveness.

This low-budget campaign was a cost-effective way of increasing the salon’s exposure in its target media. It did not require a heavy investment, costs were kept to a minimum and Silver Ball PR ensured partnerships with other businesses were used as effectively as possible.

Final results against objectives.

The management team used the nine press trips for forge strong relations with the journalists. Many of who have since written about other Stuart Holmes stories as well as the Hair Holiday.

The Hair Holiday concept generated more than 17 pieces of on and offline coverage. Further coverage is still expected in The SPA Traveller, Cosmopolitan and The Sun.

The Hair Holiday resulted in successful partnerships being established with two local hotels that now regularly recommend the salon to guests. On the Hair Holiday journalists were also treated to dinner at The Daffodil Restaurant on a complimentary basis. Sending national journalists to dine at the restaurant helped forge relationships with the owners and as a result, additional opportunities have arisen such as being invited to do fashion shows at the restaurant and market directly to their database.

The trade press has shown real interest in the Hair Holidays with Catriona Innes from Salon Business describing it as ‘one of the most unique’ marketing campaigns she has ever seen.It has brought the salon to editors’ attention and Stuart Holmes is now regularly asked to comment on stories and feature as an industry thought-leader.

New client numbers have gone up in the past six months and existing clients are rebooking more often. The PR campaign stimulated enough additional demand to warrant the opening of one more beauty room and the employment of one more stylist. Stuart Holmes was also named as Salon of The Year in the prestigious British Hairdressing Awards beating the likes of Sir Trevor Sorbie and Michael Van Clarke. This success has been partly attributed to their strong PR campaign.