Company: Chameleon PR
Campaign: High Society: Drug Prevalence in the UK Workplace
Category: Healthcare / Pharma Campaign of the Year - South - WINNER
Objectives
Whilst probably Europe’s largest drug and alcohol testing organisation, Concateno’s public profile has traditionally been relatively low. Concateno aimed to position itself as the first choice provider of appropriate, accredited, accurate, timely and reliable drug and alcohol testing, and to raise awareness of the impact of drug and alcohol misuse in society and the workplace.
Strategy
Chameleon worked with Concateno to help move the testing company towards recognition as the market leader, by acting as an industry commentator and expert on key industry topics. There is generally very little credible data relating to the true picture of drug misuse in UK society.
As a result of many years of managing drug and alcohol testing programmes for workplace customers, Concateno has accrued a significant amount of testing data. To highlight the real value of Concateno’s insight to Government, UK employees and the society in general, Chameleon developed a campaign which utilised this wealth of information and harnessed Concateno’s expertise at the same time, working this into an extremely strong media story.
The campaign used the key findings from 1.6 million workplace tests conducted by Concateno over a five year period to highlight drug usage trends and interesting results to stimulate discussion. The research showed that one in 30 British employees tested positive for drugs including cannabis, opiates and cocaine at any point in time – equating to nearly a million people. There had also been a 43% increase in drug positivity rates over the last five years. Examining the raw data, Chameleon developed ‘High Society’ - a detailed research white paper report with Concateno’s expert drug testing laboratory specialists.
Concateno operates in a tightly regulated industry, and with a strong reputation; it was vital that the results were interpreted correctly and represented the true picture of drug use in the workplace. This report was the largest of its kind ever produced in the UK.
Action
Using Chameleon’s publishing house model, the research report was supplemented by a news alert, key facts for journalists and digital content in order to direct traffic to Concateno’s website for data capture and sales lead conversion. To support the launch, Chameleon secured several high profile exclusives within the BBC, including BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
Chameleon media trained Dr. Claire George, Concateno’s laboratory director, who was selected as the key spokesperson. Chameleon secured other national media pre- briefings on the Friday and Sunday before the Monday launch. Of particular importance, Chameleon had briefed Press Association, so the journalists contacted on Sunday and offered interviews were already aware of the story via the PA news feed. After a successful sell-in to key national newspapers, at 8pm the night before the campaign launch, the chairman of Barclays announced he was going to resign the following morning.
With the LIBOR scandal set to dominate the morning news agenda, BBC Breakfast and the Today Show chose to run with the banking controversy all Monday morning and therefore cancelled the Concateno appearance at the very last minute - a stark reminder of the volatile nature of the news industry.
Chameleon moved fast to secure other opportunities for broadcast that evening by convincing journalists and programme planners that the news should cover an alternative to the LIBOR scandal.
Results
On Monday morning, Dr. Claire George was kept extremely busy with 15 radio interviews back to back, including Radio 5 Wake Up to Money, Radio 5 Breakfast and - via the BBC’s central GNS news-sharing system - most of the BBC’s regional radio stations including BBC London. Chameleon also landed the front page of the Metro nationwide, and nearly every UK national newspaper covered the story, including the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Star and Daily Mail – which covered the story twice on consecutive days.
The story was also featured on ITV’s Daybreak and the BBC World News website. Spurred on by the PA story and continual pitching, the story kept running in the major regional newspaper groups and websites for weeks afterwards. The story soon went global, reaching Asia, Australasia, Africa and the US – including New York Daily News, the fourth most circulated paper in the States. To date, the story has had over 200 pieces of coverage, including seven nationals, 25 broadcast pieces and 22 regionals.
URLS
http://www.chameleonpr.com/case-studies/concateno-high-society-case-study.html
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