Blueclaw’s “Always On” approach to Digital PR involved continuous monitoring of the news agenda and creating reactionary PR opportunities in the same day.
This type of approach allowed the team to:
- Be agile to support new industry developments
- Respond to newsjacking opportunities
- React to timely and relevant news opportunities
- Monitor ongoing media request and newsjacking opportunities
As a result of this approach, four standout campaigns were created to meet the noted objectives:
1. Vaping and Driving
After noticing that the laws around vaping and driving can potentially be a grey area under certain circumstances, we decided that this ambiguity created good conditions for a hard-hitting piece of advice.
We contacted a motor insurance broker to comment on how, in the near future, vaping might cause issues for insurance claims. We also contacted RoSPA to quote their take on how vaping at the wheel could be distracting.
We then combined this with figures outlining the increasing popularity of vaping and a final reaction comment from AMT, to underline the most hard-hitting points.
2. Driving Tests and Instructors
We sourced official statistics from the Department for Transport that listed pass rates for learners taking practical driving tests at every test centre in the UK.
We used this to calculate the easiest and hardest places to pass a test in the UK, based on average results over 10 years. This gave us a simple but strong geographical angle, with a clear distinction between urban and rural areas, as well as a ranking of cities.
We also followed this up with data from the same source, which listed pass rates for people training to become driving instructors. We used the large geographical variation of this to call into question the consistency of instructor standards across the UK.
3. Parking Tickets
We issued Freedom of Information requests to the local authorities of 15 core UK cities, to find out how many parking PCNs were issued in 12 months, how many were appealed and how many appeals were successful.
Using this, we were able to determine the cities in which drivers were most likely to unfairly fined for parking.
The accompanying blog not only went info further detail about the data, but also gave a succinct guide on how to appeal a parking fine.
Although parking ticket numbers are a regular news story, this proved successful because it was taken further with the concept of successful appeals equating to ‘unfair’ tickets.
4. Crash Hotspots
Using brand new data from the Department for Transport, World Health Organization and Road Traffic Forecasts, our analysis revealed that, despite car occupants accounting for the most road deaths (44%) in 2018, motorbikes remain the riskiest transport, with 16,818 casualties and 354 fatalities reported – a slight increase from 349 last year.
Using this, we were able to determine the region that saw the highest numbers of casualties and fatalities caused by motor vehicles.
