We achieved mammoth coverage for a new author.
THE BRIEF
Author of ‘Dodging Elephants’, Alice Morrison, came to us for support in launching her latest book. We were enlisted to boost her profile, achieve coverage and review and create media interest in the run up to the launch. Alice's ultimate goal for us was to acheive her a presence on TV.
THE CHALLENGE
How could we make ‘Dodging Elephants’ stand out from the thousands of books released on a weekly basis?
THE SOLUTION
Our strategy was based on our client’s key objective: to promote ‘Dodging Elephants’ as an inspirational book proving that ‘if she can do it, anyone can’.
Alice has a great backstory which was the perfect backdrop to her book; Alice quit her job and her life in the UK to take on a momentous physical challenge – the Tour d’Afrique. Alice had little training for this cycling adventure but that didn’t faze her, she just went and did it anyway proving that determination goes a very long way (12,000 kilometres to be precise).
The other great assets that Alice gave us along with her own empowering story were her incredible photographs from her trip. We all know a picture can tell a thousand words and Alice’s evocative images of Africa were really powerful.
We approached national titles, supplements and women’s titles with the ‘inspirational woman’ angle, we approached sporting and cycling titles with the ‘novice takes on world challenge’ angle and we approached the Scottish titles with the ‘Scottish born’ angle. Each approach was carefully thought out and offered on a personal basis to journalists with accompanying images, links to the stockist, extracts and offers to interview our charismatic author.
THE OUTCOME
In just two months working with ‘Dodging Elephants’ we achieved six pieces of national coverage including a double page spread in The Scottish Mail on Sunday (83,079), a half page in the Scotsman Magazine (22,740), a full page in the Daily Express (419,328), a piece on The Express Online (36,927,044), a half page in The Herald (32,141) and a half hour interview with Alice on BBC 5 Live. This coverage reached over 37 million people and equates to over £60,000 in advertising value equivalent.
Following the outstanding coverage achieved by the Sunny Bird PR team, the BBC contacted Alice and commissioned a documentary following her travels and adventures to be aired on BBC Two.
