July 15th, 2024
The Mark of Travel & Tourism PR Campaign Excellence
It is with some delight that we can reveal that Catapult PR won two PR awards in June, to take our total of awards to a staggering 67. As we reported earlier, the first was a PRCA DARE Award North (for a travel PR campaign); the second was a much-coveted national CIPR Excellence ‘Mark of Excellence Award.’
Due to other commitments, we could not travel to the national final in London, to compete against the UK’s biggest PR agencies and in-house teams, but were delighted to learn that we had scooped the accolade in the Best Long Term PR Campaign category.
This particular travel PR campaign – public relations for a visitor attraction – has built momentum over three years, hence suiting the long term campaign criteria to a tee.
What this highlights is the importance of not just having an initial creative PR idea but embedding that idea in PR strategy and longer-term marketing vision. In this particular case, the vision was very much about building a concept that would position the client at the apex of their tourism niche, not just in the UK but on a worldwide stage. In that way, it could contribute to inbound tourism into the UK and into the county of Cumbria, attracting overseas visitors, by raising awareness of the unique visitor attraction offering.
Furthermore, the vision was about maximising advantage from a unique selling point – having the world’s ‘oldest’ in this case. It breathed life, I suppose, into what the very initial SWOT analysis revealed. To leverage the key ‘strength’ and, simultaneously, the ‘opportunity’, I had to think creatively and, should I say, given that this is about topiary, ‘outside the boxwood’!
Brand Awareness PR on a budget
I personally love the fact that Catapult PR has, in June, won an award for Best Low Budget PR Campaign and Best Long Term Campaign. Together, these accolades sum up what we are all about at Catapult PR – delivering superb value for money, excellent results for the money spent and a longer-term strategic benefit to the client. We are a Lancashire-based PR agency but, once again, proving that we can achieve great things for clients in other counties, which was, in this case, Cumbria.
We are not about one-off stunts that have a very short lifespan. We build and we build and we build brands, embedding awareness in the public consciousness and in the minds of the target audience. It’s much harder to do that and takes ongoing commitment and dedication to continually thinking about the client, the strategy and the campaign. But, again, that’s what we’re all about. That’s what I relish.
Another travel PR award
It’s an added bonus to pick up these awards for a travel PR campaign, further reinforcing our position as one of the UK’s leading travel, tourism and leisure PR agencies, with a real ability to bring the ‘less glamourous’ UK visitor experiences to life. For me, it’s not just a case of booking press on to media trips but actually creating news and interest in the tourism product, in a highly creative and memorable way.
What has struck me about PR awards in recent years is that there are very few agencies that can continually craft award-winning campaigns, year after year. There are plenty of ‘one-hit wonders’, who can put one campaign together, in one year, and make an impact. Many of these agencies are never seen or heard of at award ceremonies again.
I do, naturally, wish that we were not always competing in what I view as high-traffic award categories. How I’d love to be able to put something into a category such as Best Newsletter or Best Public Service Campaign, where even just a little bit of creativity would probably wow. But, I suppose, winning in the categories in which we do scoop accolades, shows that the campaigns must be pretty darn good, especially given the modest budget that we have at our disposal, compared to that of our competitors.
Creative insurance and financial services PR
I do love to do the unexpected within a niche and that’s what’s happening right now, for one of our insurance PR clients. I’ve devised something very different and, perhaps, that will, one day soon, make awards judges sit up and take notice. More of that, maybe, once it’s all come to fruition. Being as well known for creativity in insurance PR and financial services PR is just as important to me as the travel PR kudos that we earn.
This was a year in which I deliberately cut back on award entries, decided to be very selective and saved time and money. Literally, we have entered two award categories and won in both!
As an added bonus, our client has been able to point to the marketing success achieved and use that as one element of their own award entry, which has just seen them named ‘Small Visitor Attraction of the Year’ in their county.
I do hope that Catapult PR”s 67 awards to date prove that form is temporary and class is permanent. Being able to show that we remain best in class, 25 years after winning our first awards, makes me very proud.
Being a rocket queen
More importantly, however, I truly relish being a rocket queen (my Axl Rose reference for the day). In my case, it’s all about catapulting clients into the limelight and seeing their exposure soar. It’s hard to break the habits of a working lifetime.
