Online PR lifts box office sales.
If you type suffolk bear in to Google "you are in for a big surprise" as the song says. A host of online articles and blog comments covered news of a reported sighting of a bear in a remote Suffolk forest. It was of course a well-planned spoof, there have been no wild bears in the UK for over a thousand years. That wasn't enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the local and national media, however, who covered the story extensively (Telegraph, BBC Breakfast, Guardian, Daily Mail and East Anglian Daily Times to name a few).
The story was created with our client Red Rose Chain to promote the 10th annual theatre in the forest event and they executed it brilliantly, even down to the convincing bear video footage. This year the company will perform The Winters Tale in an open air theatre in the midst of Rendlesham forest. Its a lesser known work of Shakespeare but a magical story perfect for the forest and perfect for the diverse audience that has come to love the annual event. The sighting had an enormous impact and created genuine long-lasting interest in a production that might easily have been overlooked. Box office sales are already well up on last year, just the start the event needs.
The wealth of free media available to brands today opens up enormous opportunities to deliver engaging messages to the heart of an audience. It may be free but its not necessarily easy. To be effective online brands need to work hard on getting the right message, to the right audience and with stand-out. With so much online "noise" for readers to filter, whether they be on Youtube, Facebook Twitter or linkedin a message can easily be lost; like being in a forest - and you wouldn't want that, there might be bears!
