client: Goodyear
Our journey with the Goodyear Blimp
There’s always excitement around spotting the Goodyear blimp, but even more so on this occasion, as it had been over a decade since Goodyear’s last flew above the UK. For its return tour over the nation, Goodyear set us the task of bringing the (PR and social) noise, to maximise the chance of people seeing it IRL.
The ‘do look up’ plan on social
We used granular audience targeting across Facebook and Twitter, as well as laser-focussed geo-targeting for the areas that Goodyear would be flying over on specific days.
And, we reached even further beyond our car-loving and tyre-loving audiences, to local lookalikes of our existing audiences, who didn’t already like the page.
And the Goodyear Blimp trended on Twitter for a day…
Twitter was a huge success, generating the highest amount of UGC.
We prepared live Tweet-threads for London and the south coast, and for broader awareness, reached out to various local landmarks as we flew overhead (for – successful – retweets).
As the day went on, high quality news sites like BBC South East got involved too. For the piste de resistance, our brand ambassador in the sky was trending above #ItsComingHome on the day of a major England Euro 2020 game.
The PR plan went up and down
It wasn’t a hard sell to get media to join us for a trip in the sky. We pre-confirmed national news titles like Guardian and Metro, broadcasters like This Morning and BBC’s Blue Peter, and consumer-facing, automotive specialists Top Gear.
We even organised, in collaboration with YouTube channel Car Throttle, a race through London involving the blimp flying, a speedboat on the River Thames and a car on ground.
We then received the news that a combination of Covid-19 and Brexit restrictions meant the Goodyear Blimp couldn’t land in the UK. It would instead fly across the Channel from Calais, complete its route and then return, all without ever touching down on British soil. None of the photographers, film crews and journalists we had spent weeks organising could get on board.
Once we were over the shattering disappointment, we set to work on securing daily news alerts with media on the Goodyear Blimp being in the sky, with a few facts and figures thrown in too.
The first-class results
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