Case study · Food & Drink
Cartwright & Butler needed its Christmas collection to be seen and bought. We mapped where its products could appear, sampled to the right journalists and made sure coverage linked to the website. The campaign earned 78 pieces of coverage, 49 with links, and an 8% uplift in sales. One Telegraph piece led to a corporate deal.
- +8% sales in the key period
- 78 pieces of coverage
- 49 direct links to site
- 1 corporate deal
- Client Cartwright & Butler
- Sector Premium food and drink
- Services Product placement, digital PR, sampling
- Audience Christmas gift shoppers
- Channels National, regional and lifestyle media, online gift guides
What did Cartwright & Butler need?
Cartwright & Butler makes luxury teatime treats and hampers. Christmas is its key sales period, and it needed its collection in front of gift buyers.
Just as important, it needed coverage with links to its website, to drive traffic and sales.
- Business objective: drive sales of the Christmas collection during the key period.
- Communication objective: secure high-quality festive coverage with authority links to the website.
What was the insight?
Online gift guides drive clicks, but only if the link is there. Choosing where to pitch matters as much as what to pitch.
The idea was Christmas Wrapped Up, a programme built around the titles most likely to link.
What did we do?
- A media audit. We mapped the best opportunities for each core product, focusing on online titles.
- Themed pitches. We built a programme of themed Christmas pitches around the collection.
- Press sampling. Targeted sampling gave journalists a reason to feature the products.
- Links in every piece. We pushed for a direct link in every placement.
What did it achieve?
Results by stage of the AMEC evaluation framework, with the source for each figure.
| Stage | Measure | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outputs | Pieces of coverage | 78 | Prohibition coverage log |
| Outputs | Pieces with a direct link to the website | 49 | Prohibition coverage log |
| Outcomes | Website visits from one Telegraph piece | About 4,000 | Cartwright & Butler web analytics |
| Impact | Sales uplift in the key period attributed to PR | +8% | Cartwright & Butler |
| Impact | Corporate deal secured from coverage | 1 | Cartwright & Butler |
What did Cartwright & Butler get from it?
More Christmas sales, and a new corporate customer. The Telegraph piece alone sent around 4,000 visitors to the website and led directly to a corporate deal.
What did we learn?
- Audit first. Knowing which titles link shaped the whole plan.
- One great placement can pay back. A single national piece delivered traffic and a new corporate customer.
- What we would do differently. use tracked links for every placement, so each title’s sales can be compared.
