Jennifer O'Grady - Head of Agency

Head of Agency

Our ‘Perfect Cuppa’ press release has this week split the nation after it appeared in a raft of national media titles and started a heated debate on broadcast, including Good Morning Britain. Together with our client INTU Boiling Water Taps we set the nation talking and created mass brand awareness for one of our homes and interiors clients. Find out how we did it below…


INTRO

INTU Boiling Water Taps is a new player in the boiling water tap category on a mission to bring hot tap technology to the masses. But, as a new entrant into the sector, how could we generate mass brand awareness for this fledgling business and create enough interest in their proposition that potential customers checked out their website?

DAY ONE STATS: April 6 2021

  • 15 pieces of national press coverage
  • Seven links to the INTU Boiling Water Taps website from national media
  • More than 70million opportunities to see or hear about INTU
  • Website traffic up by 30%
  • Facebook traffic increased by 100%
  • 4.04M impressions

WHAT WE DID

With no additional budget outside our monthly retainer available, we knew the only way to secure the attention of the national media was to create a news story with widespread walkability. 

And what are Brits more passionate about than a good cup of tea?

Our approach was to frame our INTU Boiling Water Taps as the saviour of the proper cuppa – specifically for those in hard water areas, by revealing the ‘right’ way to make a cuppa.

We identified Professor Alan Mackie at Leeds University as a foremost expert in flavour – and enlisted him to settle the age old debate – milk in first or last?

In a video we filmed in his lab, he explained the science behind how adding milk at the start of the process improves taste by locking in compounds.

By combining this with INTU’s key messaging around how a boiling water tap makes preparing the perfect brew a doddle – we had a compelling proposition that we knew would spark a national conversation.

Democracy’s strong relationships with national print and broadcast outlets were used to secure an exclusive with The Sun newspaper – both in print and online. 

As soon as The Sun ran the story, Democracy’s Amplification team sprung into action, ensuring that the story was also pitched to all relevant journalists across national print and online, broadcast and social media.

This resulted in a steady stream of coverage throughout the day, with highlights including MailOnlineThe Mirror and The Daily Star

As predicted, the story sparked passionate debate among tea drinkers out there, including famous faces from TV such as BBC Breakfast’s Dan Walker and GMB’s Kate Garraway.

Dan Walker tweeted a picture of The Sun print version of the story – telling his 706,900 followers that his co-presenter Louise Minchin was outraged by the suggestion that milk should be added first. It received 536 comments, 801 likes and 115 re-tweets on day one.

The Twitter account for Good Morning Britain posted the on-air segment showing presenters Kate Garraway and Adil Ray discussing the story and debating whether milk or boiling water should go first. This reached their 869,700 followers, receiving 536 comments, 801 likes and 115 re-tweets within the first six hours.


RESULTS

On the day of issue, national media coverage alone created more than 70 million opportunities to see the story. 

ALL coverage included at least one INTU brand mention and a quote from INTU MD Kieran Taylor-Bradshaw. 

The Sun, The Mirror and LADbible were just three of the publications to also include links to the INTU website – boosting domain authority, driving traffic to the site and creating trust for a previously unknown brand.

On the day of launch, traffic to INTUboilingwatertaps.co.uk increased by 30% compared with the previous day’s traffic, with referral traffic accounting for 10x the amount of traffic than on the previous day.  

Users came through from top referrers ladbible.com, independent.co.uk and dailystar.co.uk among other high domain authority ranking media outlets. 

Traffic to the INTU homepage more than tripled, with most media activity driving traffic to this page, while the dedicated blog post on the topic has had more than 100 visitors since going live. These users are spending more than twice the average amount of time on the INTU site, demonstrating the quality of traffic being driven. 

At the same time Facebook traffic doubled overnight for the brand in light of the news story being talked about so much.

Overall, this story helped not only to raise awareness for INTU, but also built brand relevance – bringing new customers to the website and growing an engaged audience for future content. 


CLIENT FEEDBACK

Kieran Taylor-Bradsahaw, Managing Director at INTU Boiling Water Taps, said: “Thank you so much to the Democracy team for their creativity and hard work on helping us elevate the INTU Boiling Water Taps brand. Already there has been an increase in website traffic so I can see that people have been checking us out from the media links. Even more so, the Google backlink credibility from the national media linking back to our website will make a positive impact to our domain authority.”