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Hedgehog Hall of Fame: Brazil - Hazardous Parking

Company: Brazil Campaign: Hazardous Parking - swiftcover.com Category: Best Use of Research - South - WINNER Objective • Build an original, groundbreaking campaign by finding an unexplored hook for a newsworthy car insurance issue • Maintain the swiftcover.com brand challenger status and edginess by raising a controversial issue, close to motorists’ hearts • Gain brand awareness through traditional print channels as well as online news services and social activity • Integrate the campaign with social media channels including Facebook and Twitter to aid the ranking of the website on Google •Improve SEO rankings by ensuring that the swiftcover.com website  is entwined in the story Target audience  • Strategy: develop a unique, motorist issue, which highlights an unknown car insurance risk, through print, broadcast and social media • Target audience: as swiftcover.com is the UK’s first online insurer, the target audience is younger, online savvy drivers particularly in the 25-35 age group Action • With the aim of discovering potential story ideas in preparation for building relevant brand campaigns, the Brazil team went to work at the offices of swiftcover.com’s claims team •Brazil chose to focus on parking on double yellow lines and the potential implications if an illegally-parked vehicle caused an accident • Brazil found that if a car parked illegally on double yellow lines was to cause an accident, the owner could be liable to pay for up to 30% of the claim – something Brazil believed to be previously unknown by the media and general public • To add to the story’s newsworthiness, Brazil set out to highlight the amount of potential risks in this area and determine how many illegally parked cars there are year-on-year since 2010, while looking at other angles to maintain momentum of the story •The work considered the number of parking fines issued each year by local councils, how many were disputed and of those, what proportion was successful. An understanding of how many traffic wardens employed by each local council would be obtained to present a comprehensive picture and outcome to the media • Brazil carried out extensive Freedom of Information act requests, asking 94 cities and large towns across the UK to complete four simple questions • Results showed that a parking fine in the UK was issued every 4.6 seconds in 2011. The total number issued per annum had risen from 6.5m to 6.8m in a year yet the number of traffic wardens had decreased in the same period. Regional analysis enabled us to map out the most prolific councils, and the most active traffic wardens. A story was born. • Brazil also carried out secondary research to see whether local drivers thought parking in their local town or city was becoming more difficult and whether people were prevented from shopping locally because of this. • As part of the preparation phase and the media assault at launch, Brazil enlisted a key ‘independent’ blogger close to the parking issue – Barrie Segal, the founder of AppealNow.com. Brazil prepared AppealNow.com to endorse the findings through his online following of more than 100k each month, as well as for broadcast interviews where brand mentions and interviews aren’t accepted • Brazil wrote an SEO-optimised feature on the story for the swiftcover.com website which could be seeded online as the conversations escalated through social media Results Gain brand awareness through traditional print channels as well as online news services • 214 piece of coverage on day of launch (25 May), 292 within a week • This includes 15 nationals, 228 regional publications (on and offline) and 49 broadcast • Broadcast included 8 BBC stations, Heart network of 14 stations, as well as across the 9 Capital stations and LBC (twice, once for news, the second for the Ian Collins talk show) • TV, including ITV and Sky News, led on the FOI findings while interviewing AppealNow.com as the key commentator •AppealNow.com was interviewed in 28% of broadcast interviews, all of which mentioned swiftcover.com • 93% of coverage addressed the core issue of Hazardous Parking while 98% mentioned swiftcover.com •An AVE of more than £330,000 was achieved (not multiplied) • The coverage resulted in a total reach of 240 million Build an original, groundbreaking campaign; maintain the swiftcover.com brand challenger status • An AVE of more than £330,000 was achieved (not multiplied) • The coverage resulted in a total reach of 240 million • MP engagement as a result of releasing the findings sparked a debate on whether councils should be allowed to hand so many fines out and that this should be looked at by government – the debate has just begun • AppealNow.com saw its traffic increased by 176%, with enquiries up significantly Integrate the campaign with social media channels; improve SEO rankings • As a result of seeding across social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, Google Analytics showed that 13,592 social conversations (up 123% on a normal three day period) about Hazardous Parking took place in the three days post release – equivalent to £1.3m in social value (according to Google Analytics) • Facebook seeding resulted in 75,733 potential customers interacting with the story Facebook via swiftcover.com’s 46,000 fans, and therefore reaching an audience of 17.4m (based on each person having 230 friends) • 114 tweets relating to the story on day of launch – 19% by news outlets • Estimated reach of 14,364 on Twitter (based on average follower number of 126) • The week before the launch of the Hazardous Parking story, swiftcover.com was ranked 11th on Google for ‘car insurance’. Within a day of the story going live, the swiftcover.com ranking leapt to 5th, and maintained the position for a week • As a result of the story, traffic to the .com increased by 41% (based on average traffic per day for the previous week) The PRmoment Golden Hedgehog Awards 2014 are now open for entries. Here are this years updated categories.  

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