5 of the best PR Campaigns of 2021
After the year that sent most marketing and PR campaigns into a spin and pushed every brand into a massive pivot (most overused word of 2020!) It was nice to see some strong PR campaigns coming through and being optimised across all of the marketing channels this year.
PR has changed hugely over the last decade and we’re big advocates of not using it as a channel on its own. But when a great PR campaign is well executed and paired with consistent communication across all digital channels it can be a powerful thing! As someone who started her career in PR, I understand its power and how much hard work and strategic thought goes into the planning and execution of a good PR campaign.
Why PR?
Before we delve into the campaigns that caught our eye this year let's talk about why PR at all? A well-planned and executed PR campaign can get your brand in front of a big cut-through of your target audience. If you know your target audience watches a certain TV channel, podcast, or religiously reads a certain magazine or newspaper then getting your brand talked about or featured can get a lot of eyeballs on your brand and also come with the extra bolster of a personal recommendation from a journalist or influencer they trust.
If your brand has a clear objective - raising awareness of a new product, event, or service, communicating company news, or managing a brand’s reputation then PR is a good way to go. We are also big advocates of focussing your PR efforts on digital PR, above and beyond traditional print media. Digital PR has many, many benefits above and beyond just getting your brand seen. If a piece of online coverage links back to your brand page or shopping page with a nice juicy backlink from a well-respected website, it can really help bolster your website's SEO efforts. The key is for your campaigns to be optimised across all of your channels.
What makes a good PR campaign?
Honestly, sometimes a successful PR campaign really does come down to luck and timing - two things that are very, very hard to control. You can have a fantastic campaign planned only to get scuppered by a huge news story - pandemic anyone? And you know you’re in trouble when a big announcement comes from The Palace!
However, a well-planned campaign can be golden and have a huge impact on a brand. From CSR to reputational management through to a good old sales push. For us, a really successful PR campaign has to have a clear objective, deliver an important message, target a specific audience and have a simple call to action.
The key ingredients for a successful PR campaign in 2021 were:
Cause: After a year we’ll never forget, brands couldn’t just put out a branded story or do something completely self-focused. 2021 was the year of fighting for a cause and showing compassion.
Call to action: Let your audience know exactly what you want them to do off the back of your campaign and make it very simple for them to act now.
Creativity: We’ve all gone a little stir crazy in the same four walls so a dash of creativity and something to make your audience smile was a winner this year.
Amplified digitally: Reading it on paper or hearing it on the radio is not enough. We expect to be able to find what we’ve seen or heard on your website’s homepage, on your social media channels, and in your newsletters.
PR Campaigns that caught our attention this year
So here are the five PR campaigns that really made a splash this year and why we think they deserve a mention. A virtual high five and a glass raised to the teams behind them.
EA Sports’ Fifa 21 and the Kiyan Prince Foundation
This was a brilliant campaign, well thought through, perfectly communicated, well-timed, and full of social purpose and heart. The Fifa 21 game was launched featuring Kiyan Prince who was tragically killed as a teenager when he tried to break up a knife fight.
The campaign raised awareness of knife crime in the UK and was launched alongside the terrifying stats that nearly as many teens had already been killed in the UK in May 2021 as in the whole of 2020. This campaign allowed teenager Kiyan Prince to star on screen aged 30, the age he would have been, as a player of Queens Park Rangers, where Kiyan was one of the most promising talents in the QPR academy. Fronted by Kiyan’s father, Mark, who set up the foundation to encourage young people to fulfill their potential. All proceeds went to the foundation’s work.
This was so poignant and so clever on many levels but most importantly because it was emotional, bold, and spot-on for its target audience. The campaign used Fifa 21 to speak to teenage boys - a tricky demographic to speak to usually. By taking their interests in football and gaming and tackling an important issue they were able to talk around the problem without being condescending.
The campaign received blanket PR coverage across media outlets both traditional and digital and rightly so. It was also amplified online through football players who shared it on their social channels which the target audience follow online, look up to, and respect. It was a beautifully crafted and incredibly important campaign and gets campaign of the year from us. A big shout out to Engine Creative who created the campaign and worked on it on a pro-bono basis.
Fussy and the olive tree
Taking on the pharmaceutical industry and launching a start-up to disrupt the deodorant market is no mean feat. To get the cut-through you need you must be bold, ambitious, and cut-throat. Key messages that the ‘same old, same old isn’t working anymore and what we offer is a better product that’s better for the planet is a good start. This is a route Sassy start-up Fussy took as they launched an ad campaign that drew direct and (sadly) incorrect comparisons to well-known deodorant brands from Unilever to show they were doing things better. Fast forward and they must have had a moment of panic when Unilever CEO Alan Jope called them out on it.
Thankfully, Fussy’s founders Matt Kennedy and Eddie Fisher, are seasoned communications pros. Cue a fantastically crafted PR campaign that saw Fussy put their hand up, accept what they’d done wrong and make it right.
The brand wrote an open letter of apology to Jope which they publicised on their social channels. Next, they personally hand-delivered not just an olive branch as an apology but a whole olive tree. The perfect visual gesture to give theM video and photo content to utilise across all of their digital channels as well as make a splash in the media.
The stunt showed us that the new wave of honest pharmaceuticals know how to do things properly, the importance of transparency in every touchpoint of your business from the ingredients you use to the packaging of your product, to the impact your making on the planet through to your communication. Key learning, even when you don’t quite get things right, a well-planned PR campaign can get you back on an even keel.
Well played Fussy, well played!
Tesco and the great pub weekend
They may be a supermarket giant but you’ve got to hand it to them this campaign was well thought through, landed at the exact right time, and gave you all the feels you needed after yet another lockdown.
After months of being locked down, opened for limited times, and facing the toughest period for many, many years, pubs were due to open post-lockdown in April 2021. Tesco came out with a PR campaign that hit the headlines and flooded our social media channels.
The supermarket told its customers not to buy alcohol in store but to get out and support our pubs with the message:
“Pop to your local if you can. As good as our deals are, this week we’d rather you support your local pub (as long as you feel safe to do so). Because right now, every little helps”.
Great sentiment whilst still delivering key messages of their value and incorporating their company tagline. A well-rounded and well-executed campaign indeed.
HSBC and Shelter break the #viciouscircle
Keeping the cause front and centre, HSBC and Shelter launched their #viciouscircle campaign to raise awareness of their No Fixed Address Service, a scheme that aims to provide a simple bank account to people experiencing homelessness. The service, which allows a homeless person to use the address of a charity supporting them, now operates in more than 100 branches across the country
Video content shows a woman who is constantly being turned down by employers, banks, and government agencies for not having a home address with the chant: “No home? No address. No address? No bank account. No bank account? No job. No job? No home...” playing in a loop. The powerful video launched as an ad on Channel 4 alongside a well-executed PR campaign, print advertising, podcast sponsorship, and digital marketing across HSBC and Shelter’s channels.
This was expertly followed up a few months later with a secondary PR campaign announcing that HSBC had supported 150 Afghan settlers to open bank accounts. Placement of case studies was also well used to highlight the real impact the campaign had on people’s lives alongside news that the bank had opened 1,726 accounts for people experiencing homelessness in partnership with Shelter and other charities.
We like this campaign as it ran across multiple channels, kept the cause strong and central to the campaign, built momentum, and used key news events and campaign milestones to keep the campaign growing. Most importantly it clearly communicated HSBC’s commitment to enabling financial access for groups who would otherwise be excluded from banking.
Branston Pickle Post
It wouldn’t be an end-of-year round-up without ending with a festive campaign and this one from Branston Pickle really tickled us!
A brilliant PR campaign can turn a negative into a positive and this is exactly what the Pickle Post campaign did for Branston. With rumours running high of favourite delicacies and products being unavailable for Christmas thanks to supply chain issues taking pickles off the shelves around Europe, Branston launched the UK’s first-ever International Pickle Post service.
Launching online and with a London pop-up, Branston is giving you the chance to personalise a jar of pickle and send it to family and friends across Europe. With a quirky take on being a ‘Christmas hero’ the campaign got picked up in news tabloids and consumer websites alike by being expertly positioned as both a news and a gifting story. With plenty of fun one-liners and quirky content from the pop-up, the campaign was amplified across all of the brand’s digital channels giving it a great big multi-channel tick from us! You can even add a cheesy Christmas card (’pickle bells, pickle bells, pickle all the way‘ etc) to your gift, postage is free and the stamps feature scratch-and-sniffable pickles and cheese. What’s not to love?!
The team behind Branston aren’t strangers to fantastic PR campaigns. We couldn’t write this without giving the team's stunt earlier in the year a round of applause too. Branston Pickle posted a mock public service announcement on their social channels to officially distance itself from the online abuse they get when mistakenly associated with Richard Branson. With a list of outrageous stunts from the billionaire they hone in on their brand values of the simpler pleasures in life we the cracking one-liner ‘We want to stay here on earth where the sandwiches are’ - fan-bloody-tastic!
This post was written by our Co-founder, Laura. If you’re in any need of PR advice or help, do be sure to book a 30-minute discovery call.