Public sector organisation, Yorkshire Water, briefed us to devise a creative PR campaign to promote the company’s ambition to become zero carbon by 2030. It was essential to engage the public meaningfully in the programme, despite a huge amount of noise around “zero-carbon” already in the media, not to mention consumer apathy to this type of initiative.
Create:
We knew we needed a creative approach to effectively engage consumers. Following a period of research, we discovered Yorkshire Water was carrying out some innovative anaerobic digestion energy production from sewage. Also known as ‘poo power’.
We took this theme and launched the world’s first poo powered pub (using batteries charged from the anaerobic facility), the ‘The Number Two Tavern’. Serving only one drink, water, it was literally the sh*ttest pub in the UK, but also doubled as an engaging education and exhibition space, highlighting the many zero carbon initiatives from Yorkshire Water.
Engage:
We hosted an initial press launch to kick-start the event where we invited both press and senior stakeholders from both the water industry, local authorities and Yorkshire Water to speak about the importance of The Number Two Tavern and the company’s commitment to making steps to tackle the climate emergency.
To raise awareness of the poo pub amongst a local audience and drive visits to the pub, we captured a 30 second social video on the day of the launch, summing up the key messages of the pub and inviting the general public to come and see what it was all about. This video followed a targeted paid strategy to ensure local residents were aware of where and how to find us.
Convert:
The Number Two Tavern was an award-winning success, winning ‘Best Small Budget Campaign’ at the CIPR awards 2021. As well being a rip-roaring success, with both punters and media alike – achieving the following results:
- 19 pieces of coverage
- Reached 72M people through the UK media alone
- Hit headlines internationally, in the USA and Europe, as well as featuring on ITV Calendar, Daily Express, The Sun, Metro and The Daily Star
- The social media videos achieved over 118K views with an engagement rate of 30% – compared to a usual engagement rate of 4%
