How the PR silly season maximised ROI by losing cheese in space!

Cheddar‘s first flight into space is one story that marks the silly season. PRmoment analyses the value of making news while the sun shines.

At 4.30am on Tuesday 28 July, 300g of West Country Farmhouse Cheddar was launched 100,000 feet in a capsule attached to a large weather balloon. Ostensibly, this event marked the 40th anniversary of the first man on the moon. It was certainly a giant leap for a piece of cheese. It was also a great piece of PR for West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, especially when the cheese got lost, and the GPS satellite tracking device attached to it failed to send any signals back to earth. This led to the cheesemakers alerting the media about the cheese being lost in space, and another great silly season story was born. For those worried about the plight of the cheese, it was eventually found in a back yard near High Wycombe– it must be summer.

The cheese arrives at Wycombe police station!

Dom Lane, spokesperson for West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, discusses how, because the organisation does not have the budget to create expensive advertising campaigns, it came up with the idea for this stunt, and with the help of PR agency Bray Leino, publicised it to gain maximum exposure. Lane says: “The West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers are savvy enough to invest the little resource they have into more creative tactics which achieve opportunities to raise awareness of their product and its benefits. The farmers themselves meet regularly over a pint of cider to dream up ingenious ideas to wave the flag for West Country Farmhouse Cheddar.”

Going stratospheric
Once the plan to send cheese into space was finalised, Lane describes how the next step was contacting the media: “We let all the local and regional radio stations know what we were attempting, invited local TV to come and film the launch and issued a release to national, regional and online news desks.

“From the outset we made sure we were available for interview live and managed to maintain the momentum of the story by making the most of the progress of the cheese as it was launched, lost and then found. Whatever the outcome of the project, we knew people would be interested in our endeavour.

“The story ran across 33 interviews with UK radio stations (many ran phone ins and listener competitions all morning), was picked up by several regional papers and The Times, The Sun, The Express, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, BBC Breakfast (rolling bulleting throughout the show), BBC News 24, BBC Points West all day and BBC East. Online coverage has been huge, including BBC online.  We recorded 165 tweets on the day of the launch and we even had one BBC DJ run the story on his Facebook site.”

Countryside capers
Farmers Weekly Interactive picked up on this story in an article written by deputy news editor, Caroline Stocks. Stocks outlines other agricultural stories that have made silly season news. This underlines how food and animals are great subjects for this time of year, and Stocks gives her opinion as to why rural stories are so popular: “I think there are a couple of reasons: Firstly, when parliament is in recess, it seems as though the press see it as a traditional time of year to give the rural world its chance to get some coverage. Agricultural stories are often rather complicated, so it's easier for journalists to go for the simple, dafter stories.

“Also, I think agriculture tends to get a lot of attention because our largely urban media tends to see farming as 'quirky' and completely alien to city life. A lot of the stories that get covered seem to be written in the style of 'look what the funny country folk are up to now' and stories about space-travelling cheese and upside-down cows fit in with their views of farming being comical and completely separate to 'normal' life.

Holiday season

It may be a good time to try more creative tactics in PR, but with so many people away, it can be tricky to get the attention of the right people, especially for business products. Nick Rines, partner at MR communications, says “As a former publisher I know advertising departments will often give up trying to sell advertising very quickly for this period, and consequently some business titles almost become dormant. Therefore, there is much less opportunity in features, news, opinion and letters pages. With so many people being on holiday many see PR as being redundant anyway, and save material for September when activity picks up.“

Talking about the types of clients who are most likely to get exposure in the summer, Rines says: “In terms of my celebrity clients, the summer is open season. Nationals and consumer media in general are very keen on anything to do with clothes, holidays, fitness and diet. Brands that use celebrity for endorsement on these subjects sometimes miss great opportunities because they lack imagination. There can be problems with intrusion into private life on holidays, but that is to be expected and you plan accordingly.”

For those who do not have food, animal or other rural topics to talk about, there is still hope of gaining good coverage at this time of year. After all, many others are wary of putting out news in the summer, so now can be a good time to stand out, no matter what the subject. Janine Wood, founder of marketing and public relations consultants Armadillo, believes it is much easier to gain coverage at this time of the year, but adds: “I query the value as so many people are on holiday or at least in holiday mode”. Wood says, however, that now is a good time for planning forward campaigns and coming up with new strategies. She says, “I think it is important to have some downtime when we are less pressured to gain coverage and allowed space to be more creative. I always explain this to clients and they are perfectly happy to accept work undertaken is more 'covert' and strategic.”